{"id":435199,"date":"2022-04-21T17:44:04","date_gmt":"2022-04-21T14:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-hunt-for-b-c-s-most-notorious-fisherman\/"},"modified":"2022-04-21T17:44:04","modified_gmt":"2022-04-21T14:44:04","slug":"the-hunt-for-b-c-s-most-notorious-fisherman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-hunt-for-b-c-s-most-notorious-fisherman\/","title":{"rendered":"#The hunt for B.C.\u2019s most notorious fisherman"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_85 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a3dcae6ac4b1\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a3dcae6ac4b1\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-hunt-for-b-c-s-most-notorious-fisherman\/#%E2%80%9CThe_hunt_for_BCs_most_notorious_fisherman%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;The hunt for B.C.\u2019s most notorious fisherman&#8221;<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CThe_hunt_for_BCs_most_notorious_fisherman%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;The hunt for B.C.\u2019s most notorious fisherman&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n<div>\n                <strong>Just before midnight on March 1, 2020,<\/strong> with a steady rain pit-patting onto Vancouver Harbour, the SeaBus was making one of its final runs of the day to the North Shore when the captain noticed a small vessel directly ahead. Roughly eight metres long with an aluminum hull, it was a style of boat typically used by commercial crab fishermen\u2014odd, because the busy harbour is off limits to fishing. The boat\u2019s lights were off, but a few people could be seen milling around on its deck. The SeaBus captain reported this suspicious traffic to the Coast Guard.<\/p>\n<p>On a Coast Guard patrol ship in nearby English Bay, Leslie Sanderson was awoken and briefed about a boat that might be fishing where it shouldn\u2019t be. Sanderson, a field supervisor at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, or DFO, im<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a>tely had a pretty good idea who the culprit was. Almost any DFO officer would have guessed the same name. So he and three officers rushed to one of their high-speed Zodiacs, fired up its twin outboards and whipped under the Lions Gate Bridge to start the hunt.<\/p>\n<p>Through binoculars, a crew member quickly spied the suspect vessel, which was lit only by headlamps worn by the shadowy figures on board. The boat was listing slightly, with a trap-hauling line extending into the water. The patrol vessel edged up to within a few boat lengths, then switched on its blue emergency strobe. The fishing boat\u2019s operator quickly grabbed his wheel and sped away.<\/p>\n<p>The patrol boat gave chase at up to 40 knots, or 75 kilometres per hour\u2014absurdly fast for the middle of the night in a crowded waterway. The fleeing boat made erratic turns, veering perilously close to an anchored freighter. One of the men on board could be seen clutching a jerry can, frantically refuelling as the boat zigzagged through the harbour. But a standard fishing craft can\u2019t outrun a DFO Zodiac. The crab boat gave up, pulling up at North Vancouver\u2019s Lonsdale Quay. Just before Sanderson stepped aboard, the skipper tossed his mobile phone into the water.<\/p>\n<p>Strewn about the deck were traps containing about 250 Dungeness crabs, one of the most lucrative products in B.C. salt water. It was a haul worth several thousand dollars. Sanderson quickly identified the skipper, wrestled him to the deck, yanked off the man\u2019s heavy fisherman\u2019s rubber gloves and handcuffed him. The DFO had caught Scott Steer. Again.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>***<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Every year, officers in the DFO\u2019s Pacific region <\/strong>collar a handful of serious rulebreakers<strong>,<\/strong> some more brazen than others. Scott Steer is in a class of his own, the most prolific poacher on the West Coast. He\u2019s been busted for illegally catching just about every type of fish in the north Pacific: halibut, ling cod, sablefish, crab, prawns and more, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars\u2019 worth of quality catch over the years. He has been fined repeatedly, and when that didn\u2019t work, the courts began throwing him in jail, while simultaneously sl<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ing him with an escalating <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/watch-movies-tv-seriess\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"8\" title=\"Watch Movies &amp; TV Series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">series<\/a> of fishing prohibitions. When Sanderson\u2019s crew nabbed him that night in Vancouver, Steer was already banned from so much as setting foot in a fishing boat until 2038.<\/p>\n<p>Steer, who is 44, stands a sturdy six feet, with greying stubble and weather lines around his blue eyes. He\u2019s combined a lifetime\u2019s worth of fishing know-how with the ability to spin a good tale. He is notorious for persuading those around him to give him what he wants\u2014a loan he might not pay back, or a boat he can borrow for a poaching mission.<\/p>\n<p>Steer has sustained his pattern of deceit for well over a decade. Though he is white, he has made use of special Indigenous fishing rights, and is even alleged to have posed as a First Nations member to access funds set aside for Indigenous fishermen. Steer did not respond to repeated interview requests placed with his lawyer and his wife, but people in the fishing world are astonished that he never went legit after so many fines, boat seizures and escalating penalties.<\/p>\n<p>The DFO officers whom Steer deplores, meanwhile, keep hoping they\u2019ve ended the <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/game\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"7\" title=\"Game\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">game<\/a> of cat-and-mouse-and-court-order that has defined their enforcement efforts against him. And yet they worry he has learned from his arrests and is getting better at evading capture.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1236074 size-full lazyload\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/fisherman_spot_final_EDIT_AM.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1365\" height=\"1965\"\/><br \/>\nScott Stanley Matthew Steer appears to have come by his dishonest streak honestly. His father, Stan Steer, is a commercial fisherman based at a small Fraser River inlet called Annieville Slough, not far from the family\u2019s home in Delta. Like Scott, the elder Steer is notorious among West Coast fishermen and Fisheries officers: he has a lengthy record of Fisheries Act charges and convictions up and down the coast. In 2010, for example, Stan went out with his boat, the Steer Clear, to lay crab traps in McIntyre Bay, on the northeast tip of Haida Gwaii, a day before crab season officially opened. Authorities confiscated 153 traps and returned 1,854 live crabs to the ocean. A judge fined him $20,000. Then, over 18 days in 2015, he was caught three times trying to trap prawns using a boat owned by a B.C. First Nation, yet couldn\u2019t show authorities documents proving he had rights to use the nation\u2019s Indigenous fishing licence.<\/p>\n<p>Stan began taking his son out on fishing <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/trip-and-travel\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"10\" title=\"Trip &amp; Travel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">trip<\/a>s around the time Scott was six, during spring and summer breaks, and the younger Steer grew up around the wild-and-woolly skippers and deckhands Stan would hire. By his teens, Scott was getting odd jobs in boat repair, while taking traps out on his own. He was quiet, awkward and a little bumbling, recalls Dean Keitsch, a commercial fisherman who knew him back then. As he matured, some colleagues remarked he looked like a ling cod, a fish whose head is comically large for its body. They gave him the nickname \u201cBuckethead.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Over time on the docks and decks, though, Steer developed confidence. He became known for a willingness to learn the stuff others wouldn\u2019t, and built his mind into an unofficial coastal reference guide. A colleague could phone him if he needed intel on boats for sale, the best deals with wholesalers or who was willing to lease out lucrative commercial licences.<\/p>\n<p>On the West Coast, as on the East, those licences are a form of currency. The federal government began setting up the system in the late 1960s, and by the time Steer was playing first mate on his dad\u2019s boats, the rules covered practically every species fished. The zones, quotas and caps on the number of licences in this regime are intended to serve twin purposes: to prevent overfishing and to ensure there was enough income to go around. It\u2019s a kind of supply-management system for the seas.<\/p>\n<p>For common species such as shrimp, there are a few hundred vessel licences. For others, like rare sea urchins, there are only a few dozen. All are in demand on the transfer and leasing markets. A study done for the DFO pegged the average value of a licence to commercially fish for halibut at $33,000 in 2019, and a fisherman must pay more for a by-the-pound annual quota. The average value of a crabbing licence, by comparison, was $1.1 million, and each permit holder was limited to one of seven coastal areas. But there\u2019s a big payoff: in 2019, fewer than 200 B.C. vessels were licensed to catch crab, yet those boats hauled in $92 million worth of catch, an average of nearly $500,000 per vessel.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>RELATED: The nurse imposter<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Over time, regulations have expanded to include minimum fish sizes; trap specifications; logbook requirements; and, for some fisheries, mandatory on-board video monitoring devices. Record-keeping has become as important as lines and bait.<\/p>\n<p>As the rulebook grows, though, so does the incentive to poach. Without the costly burden of licences and legally approved gear, lawbreaking fishermen can undercut their legitimate competitors by selling at below-market rates to wholesalers and trading companies, while still collecting tidy profits. Some buyers of illicit seafood are duped by fraudulent catch documents. Others are simply willing to look the other way. The catch, meanwhile, can end up almost anywhere: upscale urban restaurants, supermarkets in mid-sized cities, or, as with crab, the cargo holds of airplanes bound for China, where there is little in the way of oversight. Harvesting fish out of season, or in an area that is off limits year-round, can be particularly rewarding. They are plentiful, and there\u2019s no legitimate competition.<\/p>\n<p>Poaching, however, takes investment, knowledge and constant effort to evade detection. All the energy Steer has wasted ducking authorities could have been spent leasing a licence, working hard and going legit, observes Kelvin Campbell, a veteran B.C. crab fisherman. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t make sense to me. It\u2019s almost like he likes to get caught.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>***<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The first time Steer was found breaking commercial fishing rules,<\/strong> he got off lightly. It was the fall of 1998, and he was skippering a boat called the Lucky Kari on a halibut fishing trip. At the dock, a DFO officer came by and spotted a glaring omission: the ID number all commercial fishing vessels must display on their sides and roofs. Further inspection revealed that Steer\u2019s fishing gear was registered to a different boat\u2014another infraction. What\u2019s more, his deckhands couldn\u2019t provide the necessary fisher\u2019s registration cards. Authorities didn\u2019t catch Steer fishing, but the offences were tantamount to driving somebody else\u2019s car without a licence. Steer got off with a warning.<\/p>\n<p>The following year, he was in Port Hardy, on northeast Vancouver Island, casting long lines for halibut. At the docks, where fishermen must weigh their catches before witnesses, he brought in not only halibut but 46 pounds of ling cod, which make great restaurant fish and chips. But the ling cod fishing season for that area was closed. Somebody reported Steer to Fisheries officers, netting him his first ticket for a commercial fishing violation.<\/p>\n<p>Over the next few years, DFO officers would not be the only ones having problems with Steer. In 2006, a Vancouver-based seafood processor called Harbour Marine Products began advancing him large sums for boat upkeep and crew salaries, on the understanding he would pay them back in fish. Steer sold some of the catch elsewhere and soon stopped paying back the loans. The company sued, winning $135,144, but needed garnishing orders to recoup the money.<\/p>\n<p>His schemes grew more complex over the years, pulling in more people and companies. In 2008, he persuaded two members of a First Nation on Vancouver Island to transfer him their special licence to catch fish for food, social or ceremonial purposes. Authorities say Steer intended to sell the fish, offering the Indigenous licence-holders a generous cut of the proceeds. It was the type of promise-the-sky arrangement for which he would become infamous. Steer fished for weeks under the cover of Indigenous rights, from the north end of Vancouver Island to Haida Gwaii. He brought a massive haul to a processing plant in Port Hardy, where he flashed the Indigenous designation to bypass other layers of regulation. The plant filleted and boxed 5,000 pounds of halibut and nearly 4,500 pounds of ling cod, along with other fish. Plant staff assumed he was bringing it to First Nations for their consumption, so they marked the several dozen boxes \u201cnot for sale,\u201d as required.<\/p>\n<p>By then, DFO officers were onto Steer. They\u2019d received tips on his dubious claim of First Nations rights, and had even done aerial surveillance on his boats. That April, officers followed Steer\u2019s white cube van from Port Hardy to the B.C. Ferries terminal in Nanaimo, then over to Vancouver.<\/p>\n<p>There, they trailed him to a Wendy\u2019s parking lot alongside the Grandview Highway and watched him make a deal with somebody in a truck. After that, Steer flung open his cube van doors and began selling fillets to passersby at rates far below what supermarkets charge\u2014$1 per pound for whole ling cod; $7 per pound for halibut. An undercover Fisheries officer bought some ling cod from Steer, at which point the team arrested him. For all of those offences, he received a $3,500 fine. (This wouldn\u2019t be the last time Steer tried to take advantage of First Nations fishing privileges. As recently as 2020, he applied for fishing loans and grants from the Native Fishing Association, posing as an Indigenous man named Terry Seymour, according to allegations filed in court. He did not face charges.)<\/p>\n<p>By 2010, a Vancouver-based seafood company was sizing up Steer to lead one of its tuna-fishing expeditions. Word of his misdeeds was out: one of the company\u2019s owners had heard accounts of Steer\u2019s fraudulent use of Indigenous fishing rights. But when the other owners met him, they were intrigued by his experience and brash promises to bring in loads of fish. Despite his past wrongdoing, they hired him to skipper their 15-metre boat Pacific Titan, with a warning to follow the rules. They had reason to think he would comply: as a condition of its licence to catch sablefish, the boat was equipped with a video and GPS monitoring system that it was required to constantly run. If he strayed from the rules, there would be a digital record.<\/p>\n<p>Steer\u2019s crew didn\u2019t catch much tuna. To his bosses, he blamed this failure on the stress from the breakdown of his first marriage, and a desire to spend more time with his kids. In fact, Steer had taken out the Titan and cast his lines deeper than tuna swim, going instead for halibut, which can sell for more per pound than beef tenderloin. During these secret forays, a judge later found, Steer turned off the Titan\u2019s GPS and video systems so there was no digital record of how much fish he was landing. Crew members later testified seeing the deck of the boat covered in halibut. Steer deliberately brought those hauls to shore in the dark of night, the court said, so he could avoid validation\u2014a legally required process where the catch is weighed before a Fisheries official.<\/p>\n<p>It is against the law to sell commercially caught fish that has not been validated, but that didn\u2019t deter Steer. Using a new cellphone and the alias John Renton, he sold frozen fillets from that trip as far afield as Dawson Creek, in northeastern B.C. Out there, Steer sold sablefish and halibut to an old friend, and offered her commissions if she secured other sales. Fisheries officers followed the delivery to her house and seized the catch. Steer\u2019s friend was furious to learn he had sold her fish illegally. When she confronted him, according to court documents, he retorted: \u201cKeep your mouth shut. If you don\u2019t say anything, you can\u2019t get in trouble, and neither can I.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Steer was charged in the Pacific Titan case with selling illegally caught fish, failing to keep the GPS running and landing fish without validating them. It soon became clear his employers weren\u2019t the only ones he\u2019d cheated. By bringing in his hauls at night, Steer had also skirted the typical revenue-sharing arrangements with crew hands, which are based on official catch weights from the validation process. One of those hands, a newly landed German immigrant named Florian Spika, complained that his former skipper had bilked him out of several months\u2019 wages from their time on the Titan, and gave damning testimony when Steer was prosecuted.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>READ: Forgiving Jaskirat Sidhu<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The judge in the Pacific Titan case called Steer\u2019s treatment of Spika \u201can act of moral bankruptcy\u201d and ordered him to pay the crew member $15,000 in restitution. Steer also got a six-month jail sentence for selling illegally caught fish, along with his first ban from fishing: he would not be allowed to board a fishing vessel for 10 years. \u201cMr. Steer represents a threat to the health of the fishery,\u201d the judge wrote, \u201cand should be prohibited from participating in it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, Steer\u2019s offences kept piling up. In 2015, officers found unmarked traps, full of crab, that he\u2019d placed in Vancouver Harbour. He violated his sentencing conditions two more times the following year, and with each new conviction, the courts extended his fishing ban\u2014first to 15 years, then to 17, then to 22. His record has made him legendary among DFO officers, many of whom have monitored, investigated or busted him over the years. Still, the DFO can convict somebody only of the crimes they can prove, and officers have investigated Steer more times than they\u2019ve busted him. After they nab him, he tends to get out of jail in mere months. (The maximum sentence for most Fisheries Act offences is two years.)<\/p>\n<p>Besides, poaching is a problem that goes beyond one man. Between three and five per cent of all fish caught in Canadian waters goes unreported, potentially winding up in the illicit trade, according to estimates from a 2020 global study co-authored by Rashid Sumaila, an economist with the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia. That\u2019s not bad, comparatively speaking: in other countries, far greater shares of the catch are harvested under the radar. Still, it amounts to between $97 million and $156 million worth of fish.<\/p>\n<p class=\"longform-pullquote\">&#8216;Mr. Steer represents a threat to the health of the fishery and should be prohibited from participating in it,&#8217; wrote one judge<\/p>\n<p>Industrial-scale operators land a sizable share of that, in some cases mixing a bit of illegal fish with their legit catch\u2014a practice that\u2019s hard to trace because it requires a paper trail. But eight-metre boats like those Scott Steer has used are difficult to track, too. There are barely more than 600 DFO officers watching over Canada\u2019s coasts, rivers and freshwater lakes. Only about a quarter of them are spread among 27 Pacific region offices. Their work is vital to the whole sector: illegal vessels and reckless poachers harm aquatic habitats, mess up fish counts and steal income from honest players.<\/p>\n<p>In B.C., though, the challenge is forbidding geography. The province\u2019s gargantuan coastline is a labyrinth of inlets, islands and coves that plays to the strengths of operators like Steer. He knows them intimately, and has mastered fishing for many of the species that inhabit them. (Most commercial fishermen stick to the one or two they\u2019re licensed to catch.) What\u2019s more, every time officers catch him, he tries new ways to evade them. So the DFO has stepped up its game, spending more time tracking Steer\u2019s movements, dedicating resources reserved for the best-known rogues.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>***<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>On an April day in 2016,<\/strong> two officers followed Steer from his home in Nanaimo to the woods near a dock on nearby Gabriola Island, then watched him paddle a yellow kayak to a fishing boat that lay at anchor. He steered the vessel, the Holly V, over to the wharf, where a man they knew as a regular partner in Steer\u2019s fishing schemes waited. Officers swept in and, after a short chase, boarded the Holly V. Despite his associate\u2019s claim that nobody else was on board, they found Steer crouched in a crawlspace below the bow.<\/p>\n<p>It was a glaring breach of his fishing ban. In court, though, Steer spun a winding yarn about how he was merely helping his friend pilot the boat through a tricky set of narrows, and planned to kayak back to the dock immediately afterward. He was too busy, he said, to notice the hydraulic trap hauler on board, or the crab-measuring calipers, or the boxes of sardines marked \u201ccrab bait.\u201d At sentencing, he told Justice Neena Sharma of the B.C. Supreme Court that he wanted to do something else with his life, and had enrolled in flight school.<\/p>\n<p>It was vintage Steer, who has long countered charges against him with excuses, evasions and promises. Sharma was buying none of it. She dismissed Steer\u2019s explanation for the Holly V incident as \u201cnot only implausible but inconceivable,\u201d and handed him a 45-day jail sentence. She also had some advice: \u201cYou are 38. You do not want to find yourself in your 40s and 50s going in and out of jail. What will your kids do?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While Steer\u2019s far-fetched stories and lavish promises have not always worked on judges, he sometimes gets what he wants from wholesalers, or fellow fishermen. His old colleague Keitsch, who had long warned Steer about where his dishonesty would lead, says he lent the man $8,000 a few years ago. Admitting a soft spot for the guy he\u2019d known for decades, Keitsch says he\u2019s given up hoping of repayment, which was supposed to arrive within days.<\/p>\n<p>If Steer has a nemesis, it is Shaun Tadei, a senior DFO officer based in Nanaimo, where Steer lived until recently. Tadei is unsparing in his assessment of the man he\u2019s spent years investigating: \u201cHe\u2019s the worst poacher that we know of on the West Coast.\u201d But he\u2019s as incredulous as everyone else at Steer\u2019s audacity, and his talent for persuasion. How, he wonders, has Steer avoided the kind of rough justice aggrieved fishermen have been known to mete out? \u201cWe don\u2019t understand how this person has been able to operate, and rip off people for so long, without someone doing him serious harm,\u201d says Tadei. \u201cHe\u2019s literally ruining people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"longform-pullquote\">&#8216;He\u2019s the worst poacher that we know of on the West Coast,&#8217; says Shaun Tadei, a Fisheries officer who&#8217;s been pursuing Steer for years<\/p>\n<p>Tadei helped with investigations into Steer through the 2010s. Then, in early 2020, the higher-ups at the DFO assigned Tadei\u2019s four-person team to probe Steer\u2019s business activities and finances. It\u2019s the kind of project that police departments give to major investigations units. In this case, the work fell to Tadei and his fellow <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/general\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"3\" title=\"General\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">general<\/a>-duty officers in Nanaimo\u2014an assignment that has become almost a full-time job for him.<\/p>\n<p>Following Steer\u2019s money offered the chance to answer some longstanding questions. Over the years, Steer had done a lot of fishing\u2014some legitimate, some illegal\u2014but Tadei\u2019s team had little sense of how lucrative the illegal side of his activities had been. Nor did they know what he had done with his illicit proceeds. After his bust on the Pacific Titan, the DFO looked into his personal finances and found fewer than $100,000 in assets and more than half a million dollars in liabilities. Steer has not splurged on fancy houses or swanky cars. His social media presence shows a family man with five kids (a sixth was due in April) and a penchant for griping about the government. Tadei and his team began pulling bank records and picking up other breadcrumbs: \u201cWe\u2019re reaching out to people we know that he has ripped off, stolen money from, just never paid.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then, in a brazen move even for him, Steer went on his March 2020 night-fishing misadventure in Vancouver Harbour. His arrest kicked Tadei\u2019s investigation into high gear, and the cellphone Steer flung overboard proved a key piece of evidence. Divers recovered it from the harbour floor, with Steer\u2019s credit card and driver\u2019s licence stored in the phone case.<\/p>\n<p>With Steer\u2019s cell number, Tadei\u2019s team was able to get a production order allowing them to view Steer\u2019s contacts and communications over the phone. Fourteen months later, Steer was charged in a 2019 scheme involving the illegal harvest of sea cucumbers, bottom-dwelling invertebrates used in traditional Chinese medicine. The raft of charges in that case included something new for Steer: immigration offences. He had allegedly hired Mexican nationals who lacked work permits. (Those counts are still before the courts.)<\/p>\n<p>Last year, Steer was convicted on all charges for trapping crab in Vancouver Harbour. On top of yet another six-month jail sentence, and the forfeiture of his fishing partner\u2019s $50,000 boat, a judge gave him the harshest penalty handed to a West Coast fisherman in more than a decade: a lifetime fishing ban. Steer also received a five-year prohibition from involvement in the sale, purchasing or brokering of fish. Tadei had discovered that Steer was trying to make money off other people\u2019s catches.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1236075 size-full lazyload\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/fisherman_main_NO_cigarette_EDIT_AM.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2400\" height=\"3300\"\/><br \/>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>***<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>While Steer was under house arrest<\/strong> with his wife and kids on Gabriola Island last summer, convicted for crabbing but awaiting his sentence, federal Fisheries officers helped launch a new front in the fight to get him out of the illicit market in seafood. One evening, a process server dropped off a provincial civil forfeiture claim, brimming with the DFO\u2019s investigative work. It targeted $1.3 million sitting in bank accounts, as well as the house to which Steer was largely confined\u2014a four-bedroom, timber-framed home with vaulted ceilings, sundecks and ample yard space for trucks or boat trailers. The forfeiture revealed the many tentacles of Steer\u2019s operation, most of which he set up after the DFO\u2019s earlier look at his finances. Six companies were listed as co-defendants, and the money was spread among 25<br \/>accounts at four different banks.<\/p>\n<p>The forfeiture files also reveal that Steer has brought another family member into this murky world: his wife, Melissa, a former hairdresser who had recently started working in her husband\u2019s trade. In 2019, she began to launch seafood brokering companies; her business partner was one of Steer\u2019s crew mates when he got caught in Vancouver Harbour. The civil forfeiture claim alleges that her companies were dealing seafood without licences, and that her husband would be the one making the sales for her company. (Reached by text message, Melissa Steer declined to comment or facilitate an interview with her husband while the forfeiture case remains before the courts.)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>More:\u00a0Canadian paramedics are in crisis<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>To get a sense of how lucrative Steer\u2019s dealings were, Tadei and his team focused on one wholesaler to whom the Steers\u2019 companies sold crab\u2014$309,735 worth in a four-month span last year, according to court filings. In some cases, the documents say, the wholesaler, Shin Grand Food Trading Ltd., did not receive slips required to confirm the crabs were legally caught; in others, it got incomplete ones. A few times, the documents allege, Steer asked Shin Grand\u2019s owner, Bingxin Hou, to fill out the slips himself. \u201cI didn\u2019t know this guy\u2019s background\u201d says Hou in an interview. \u201cHe just seemed like a normal fisherman to me.\u201d Hou, who is not facing charges over the transactions, also claims Steer owes him for a $40,000 loan he never repaid.<\/p>\n<p>While the bank accounts remain frozen, the provincial forfeiture office has dropped its attempt to seize the house Steer and his family live in, which his mother-in-law owns. (Investigators initially alleged she was an \u201cowner of convenience\u201d of a house funded by illegal fishery proceeds, but the province abandoned that claim.) And there aren\u2019t any boats to pursue, because over the years Steer has been ordered by the courts to forfeit several, and is barred from owning any more. As of March, the Steers had not yet filed a defence against the other claims.<\/p>\n<p>Steer\u2019s release from jail for the Vancouver Harbour incident came late this past winter, several weeks before his wife was due to give birth. He still faces charges in the sea cucumber case, and others for alleged breaches of his conditions. The DFO, meanwhile, is not taking chances. Senior officers sent out an internal bulletin warning that he had been released, reminding staff of his history and pattern of offences. Perhaps the bans, imprisonment and forfeiture will finally deter him. But the experience of Fisheries officers up and down the coast suggests otherwise. They\u2019re as keen as ever to reel him in again.<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p><em>This article appears in print in the May 2022 issue of<\/em> Maclean\u2019s <em>magazine. Subscribe to the monthly print magazine <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/secure.macleans.ca\/loc\/MME\/head_subscribe\">here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async defer crossorigin=\"anonymous\" src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News<\/a> articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/general\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/longforms\/the-hunt-for-b-c-s-most-notorious-fisherman\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The hunt for B.C.\u2019s most notorious fisherman&#8221; Just before midnight on March 1, 2020, with a steady rain pit-patting onto Vancouver Harbour, the SeaBus was making one of its final runs of the day to the North Shore when the captain noticed a small vessel directly ahead. Roughly eight metres long with an aluminum hull,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":435200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/fisherman_main_NO_cigarette_EDIT_AM-766x431.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[128312,128313,128314,28970],"class_list":["post-435199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-canadian-outlaws","tag-department-of-fisheries-and-oceans","tag-from-the-magazine","tag-true-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}