Wellington restaurateur guilty over illegal paua

A Miramar restaurant owner has been found guilty of illegally buying poached paua.

It is the third time the Fisheries Ministry has prosecuted Feng Lan Morfee, also called Sandy, 53, who owns the Loong Fong restaurant and takeaway.

She had defended the charges but Judge Stephen Harrop, in Wellington District Court, found them proved and has remanded her for sentencing on November 12.

During Operation Paid, an undercover fisheries officer sold her paua, near the back door of her restaurant, and was also directed to another woman to sell more paua.

Judge Harrop said the defence had claimed Morfee was entrapped into buying the paua and into taking more because the undercover officer had approached her.

However, the judge said she was clearly willing to buy illegal paua from an illegitimate source.

The judge said there was no direct evidence of any sale through the restaurant but there was an obvious inference that the paua was disposed of within a short space of time by the way of sale to others.

Between October 2007 and May 2008, Morfee bought 96kg of paua from the undercover officer. She denied buying it and said she could not remember even after the officer's fake business card was found in her bag.

In 2005, a judge in Wellington District Court dismissed charges of having excess and undersized paua at the home of Morfee and her husband, Peter, after 184kg of paua was found in freezers. The judge said the ministry had not proved they were illegally obtained.

They were later reimbursed thousands of dollars for the paua.

A year earlier, after Operation Pacman, Morfee had been charged with illegally selling paua in 13 transactions. It was dismissed after the Court of Appeal had ruled a 2001 law change aimed at getting tough with poachers made it not illegal to receive money for poached seafood.