A Tauranga-based Korean businessman will spend the next two and a half years in jail for masterminding an operation that sold nine tonnes of snapper on the black market.

Joung-Oh Lee, 41, appeared for sentencing in Tauranga District Court today on seven counts of contravening the Fisheries Act for benefit that netted him $52,000 in a two month period in 2011.

Joung-Oh Lee in Tauranga District Court today.

Commercial fishing boat Newfish II.

Lee was found guilty to all seven counts at a defended hearing in November. Each of the charges carries a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment and/or $250,000 fine.

In sentencing today, Judge Christopher Harding told the court Lee was the key person in organising the illegal sale of snapper on the black market between September and November 2011.

According to court documents the fish were caught on the Tauranga-based commercial fishing boat Newfish II and brought back to Tauranga docks to be unloaded.

From there, the fish were loaded onto trucks and driven to fish retailers and takeaway outlets. Lee would drive the fish up to Auckland where a 'significant portion” was sold for cash to Pacific Fresh Fish II in Otahuhu.

According to the summary of facts, some of the snapper sold on the black-market at $6 per kilo while the balance of fish would then be transported to the Sandford's Auckland Fish Market.

'The fish sold for cash to Mr Tran [Auckland fish retailer Tuan Tran] went unrecorded. That system requires commercial fish to have an annual catch entitlement recorded,” says Judge Harding.

'You were the principle organiser of the whole system and had greater responsibility than the skipper of the boat or the sometime other driver of the truck.”

Lee's conviction is part the two-year ‘Operation Waterfowl' by the Ministry of Primary Industries, which saw six other people involved in the selling of at least 13 tonnes of fish – mainly 12 tonnes of snapper.

Last month the skipper of Newfish II - Wayne Terrence Howell – was convicted and sentenced to 12 months home detention and 200 hours community service for making false statements in fishing returns for benefit.

The Newfish II is registered to Lee's company ECZIW – in liquidation at the time of the offending. The trawler has been forfeited by the Crown.

Also involved were Western Bay Seafoods truck-driver Hira Cyril Noble and takeaway-shop owner Lay Queen Lim - both of Tauranga, Hamilton Seafoods operator Jason Lionel Abbott, and Auckland fish retailer Tuan Tran. They have already been sentenced.

The operation was launched in late 2011 following an anonymous tip to the ministry's 0800 4 Poacher line.

A team tracked the Newfish II fishing on the Mount/Papamoa coast, watched bins of fish unloaded on to trucks, which were followed to fish retailers in Tauranga, Hamilton and South Auckland and a takeaway in Tauranga. Fisheries officers also searched homes and businesses and seized hundreds of pages of documents, bins of fish, and cash.

In sentencing Judge Harding set a starting point of three and a half years before admitting there are very few, 'if any” mitigating factors for Lee.

The Judge says a probation report submitted to the court shows Lee was angry at the people who gave evidence against him and bitter towards the Ministry of Primary Industries. It also states he expressed no real insight into the seriousness of his actions.

'You complain of entrapment but it is clear that throughout all of this you had access to plenty of correct advice, which you elected not to follow.

'You were directly responsible for a significant loss to the snapper fishery by the scale of your black market dealing; the sought of behaviour that no doubt led to the recent reduction in snapper limits.”

Judge Harding sentenced Lee to two years and six months in prison along with the forfeiture of the delivery truck used in the operation.