Abalone poacher license revoked for life and 1 year in jail

Hmmm a year huh? That may be rougher than a longer sentence because you can do that in county. County ain't no(abalone) picnic.

Looks like he got the maximum sentence but not the maximum fine for 96 illegal abalone (approx. street value of $4000+). Busted 3 times in one month. Makes me wonder how many more times he did it and got away with it.

Fines Account: DFG Code Section 12009

12009. (a) Notwithstanding Section 12000, and except as provided in Section 12006.6, the punishment for a violation of any provision of Section 5521 or 5521.5, or any regulation adopted pursuant thereto, or of Section 7121 involving abalone, is a fine of not less than fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000) or more than forty thousand dollars ($40,000) and imprisonment in the county jail for a period not to exceed one year. The court shall permanently revoke any commercial fishing license, commercial fishing permit, or sport fishing license issued by the department. Any vessel, diving or other fishing gear or apparatus, or vehicle used in the commission of an offense punishable under this section, may be seized and may be ordered forfeited by the court pursuant to subdivision (c) of Section 12157. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the commercial license of any person arrested for a violation punishable under this section may not be sold, transferred, loaned, or leased, or used as security for any financial transaction until disposition of the charges is final.

I think this sort of large scale poaching is pretty common unfortunately. I had a weird experience on a very low tide at a north coast cove. When we got out of the water there were like 50 Chinese abalone divers, all together. Lots of weird details, like they were smoking cigarettes out of a water bong made from PVC pipe. They'd smoke the entire cigarette in one pull. One of them dropped his empty pack in the grass and I picked it up, and all the lettering was in Chinese, no english lettering at all. They were pulling out bags of abs and I'm quite sure they weren't California residents... Unfortunately there was no cell coverage so we couldn't contact the police, and they packed up and left pretty quickly.

Effing tool. Really clear the only thing that will stop him is a jail cell. Is he even a US citizen? There was a guy caught not too long ago (a repeat bust) who was an alien. Why his sorry ass was even still in the US is beyond me. As for Wang, I hope it is a rough trip, and he tells all his low life associates.

Here's the quote for the year sentence...he didn't get sent to the real pokey...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison

n the United States, "jail" and "prison" refer to separate levels of incarceration; generally speaking, jails are county or city administrated institutions which house both inmates awaiting trial on the local level and convicted misdemeanants serving a term of one year or less, while prisons are state or federal facilities housing those awaiting trial on the state or federal level and convicted felons serving a term of more than one year.

So essentially, he's hanging out with a lot of dudes that are in limbo, or stealing car stereos and shit like that.
It's packed pretty gnarly in there afaik :)

I hope someone plays find the abalone on him :)
heh.

Diving for that deep deep salad eh?