Washington seafood broker gets USD 25,000 fine, prison time for geoduck smuggling

The owner of Burien, Washington, U.S.A.-based seafood broker Absolute Seafoods was sentenced to 90 days in prison in a geoduck-smuggling case, while the company was ordered to pay a USD 25,000 (EUR 23,800) fine.

Jeffrey Hallin Olsen, the owner of Absolute Seafoods LLC, falsified documents and lied to authorities about disposing of 46 cases of potentially tainted geoduck from Alaska, the United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington said in a press release.

On 17 May, Hallin Olsen was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Seattle, Washington, to 90 days in prison and three years of supervised release.

“Olson chose to gamble with the lives of customers across the globe – putting them at risk of shellfish poisoning,” U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington Nick Brown said. “We’ll likely never know if any of the Chinese customers became ill from these clams, but a prison sentence is justified by the danger of his conduct and his repeated lies to authorities, claiming he had destroyed the potentially harmful geoduck.”

In February 2019, Olsen purchased 2,500 pounds of geoduck from various Alaska divers. The geoduck were mixed together in crates for shipping, and were picked up at Sea-Tac Airport, to be trucked to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and shipped to Hong Kong, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Olsen produced a U.S. Department of Commerce Export Health Certificate stating that the geoduck met health requirements.

One day after the purchase, but before the geoduck were exported, one of the divers notified Alaska state officials that he had mistakenly harvested his geoduck from an area that had not been approved for harvest. 

“The area had not been tested for the toxins that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning, which has been a recurring problem in Alaskan waters,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

An Alaska Wildlife Trooper notified Olsen that he needed to destroy the shipment as it was unsafe to consume. Olsen told the trooper he would destroy the geoduck. However, instead of destroying it, Olsen illegally shipped most of the geoduck to Hong Kong for human consumption. Olsen shipped an additional 10 cases of potentially tainted geoduck to a buyer in Oakland, California, U.S.A. His false shipping paperwork identified the contents of the crates as “fresh yelloweye,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

NOAA photo courtesy of the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington