Fisheries and Wildlife Crime and Proceeds of Crime

Fisheries and wildlife crime is often viewed as an environmental issue, but it is also a financial crime issue. Illegal fishing, poaching, wildlife trafficking, species mislabelling, illegal export, fraudulent documentation, and unlawful trade in animal or plant products are not only offences against conservation laws. They are also profit-generating activities. Where there is profit, there are proceeds. Where there are proceeds, there is a need for concealment, movement, storage, laundering, and reinvestment.

This matters because fisheries and wildlife crime is frequently misunderstood as a collection of low-level offences committed by individuals acting alone. While some cases are opportunistic, many are commercially motivated and organized. Illegal fish, seafood, animal parts, live species, trophies, plants, timber, eggs, skins, meat, and other wildlife products can move through complex supply chains. These supply chains may include harvesters, brokers, transporters, processors, exporters, importers, retailers, online sellers, restaurants, collectors, and end consumers. At each stage, money is generated, records are created, and opportunities arise for fraud, corruption, and money laundering.

The proceeds of fisheries and wildlife crime can be substantial. The value may come from the rarity of the species, the demand for luxury food, the use of animal parts in traditional medicine, the value of exotic pets, the prestige of trophies, the high price of certain fish and seafood products, or the ability to avoid regulatory costs. Criminals may also profit by evading quotas, avoiding taxes, bypassing licensing requirements, mislabelling products, or disguising illegal harvest as lawful trade.

Understanding fisheries and wildlife crime through a proceeds of crime lens changes the investigative question. It is no longer enough to ask who caught the fish, killed the animal, transported the shipment, or possessed the illegal product. Investigators, regulators, and compliance professionals must also ask who paid for it, who financed the activity, who arranged the shipment, who falsified the records, who benefited from the sale, where the money went, and whether the proceeds were laundered into the legitimate economy.

What Is Fisheries and Wildlife Crime?

Fisheries and wildlife crime includes a wide range of unlawful activity involving wild animals, fish, plants, and products derived from them. In fisheries, this may include illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing; harvesting without a licence; fishing in closed areas; exceeding quotas; misreporting catch; using prohibited gear; landing catch at unauthorized locations; transshipping fish unlawfully; falsifying logbooks; and selling illegally harvested fish or seafood.

In wildlife crime, the conduct may include poaching, unlawful hunting, illegal trapping, trafficking in endangered species, unlawful possession of wildlife products, smuggling live animals, trading in protected plants, selling animal parts, falsifying permits, or exporting wildlife without authorization. It may also include online trade in protected species, illegal taxidermy, black-market meat sales, reptile smuggling, unlawful collection of eggs, and trafficking in products such as ivory, coral, bear parts, turtle products, feathers, skins, or traditional medicine ingredients.

These crimes can be local, national, or transnational. A person may illegally hunt or fish in a local area and sell the product within the same community. At the other end of the spectrum, an organized network may source illegal fish or wildlife in one country, move it through several transit jurisdictions, alter documents along the way, and sell it in a high-demand overseas market. The offence may begin in a remote river, forest, coastline, or protected area, but the proceeds may eventually appear in bank accounts, commercial invoices, export businesses, real estate, vehicles, luxury goods, or apparently legitimate companies.

The legal frameworks that govern fisheries and wildlife are often complex. In Canada, for example, responsibility can be divided across federal, provincial, territorial, Indigenous, municipal, and international regimes. Fisheries, migratory birds, endangered species, international wildlife trade, customs, border controls, environmental protection, criminal proceeds, and financial reporting may all involve different authorities. This complexity creates enforcement challenges, but it also creates opportunities for multidisciplinary investigation.

Why Proceeds of Crime Matter

The term “proceeds of crime” refers to property, money, or other benefits obtained directly or indirectly from criminal activity. In the fisheries and wildlife context, this can include the cash received from selling illegal fish, the profit made from exporting protected species, the revenue earned by a restaurant selling unlawfully sourced seafood, or the business income generated by a company that mixes illegal product with legitimate inventory.

Proceeds of crime can also include indirect benefits. For example, an operator may profit by avoiding licence fees, inspection requirements, conservation restrictions, taxes, or labour standards. A business may gain a competitive advantage by sourcing illegal product more cheaply than lawful competitors. A trafficker may increase profit margins by misdeclaring the species, origin, weight, or value of goods. A processor may use false records to make illegal catch appear lawful. These gains are part of the economic motivation behind the crime.

Focusing on proceeds is important because it targets the reason many offenders commit fisheries and wildlife crime in the first place: financial gain. If offenders can retain their profits, enforcement may become merely a business cost. A fine, seizure, or temporary disruption may not be enough if the broader network remains intact and the profits are preserved. By identifying, restraining, seizing, and forfeiting proceeds, authorities can reduce the economic incentive and disrupt the business model behind the crime.

A proceeds-based approach also helps identify higher-level offenders. The person physically catching fish or transporting wildlife may not be the main beneficiary. They may be a low-level participant paid by a broker, exporter, restaurant owner, collector, or organized group. Following the money can reveal coordinators, financiers, corrupt facilitators, corporate structures, and market actors who are otherwise hidden behind the physical offence.

The Business Model of Fisheries and Wildlife Crime

Fisheries and wildlife crime often operates like a supply chain. At the source stage, wildlife is taken, captured, harvested, or collected unlawfully. This could involve fish taken over quota, animals poached out of season, protected species removed from the wild, or plants collected from restricted areas. At this stage, the payment may be cash-based and relatively small compared with the final market value.

The product then moves to brokers or aggregators. These actors collect product from multiple harvesters or poachers, arrange storage, prepare shipments, and connect the source supply with buyers. They may also coordinate transport, arrange false documentation, pay bribes, or direct lower-level participants. The broker stage is often critical because it connects local offending to commercial markets.

From there, the product may enter processing or transport channels. Fish may be landed, sorted, frozen, packed, or mixed with legal catch. Wildlife products may be concealed in luggage, mail, freight, or cargo. Live animals may be shipped through couriers or moved across borders in poor conditions. Animal parts may be labelled as food, medicine, ornaments, antiques, or personal items. The purpose is to move the product while reducing the risk of detection.

At the market stage, the product is sold to wholesalers, restaurants, retailers, online buyers, collectors, exporters, or end consumers. The largest profits may occur far from the place where the wildlife was taken. A rare animal, high-value seafood product, or protected wildlife derivative may increase dramatically in value as it moves through the chain. The money then needs to be stored, spent, transferred, or laundered.

This business model demonstrates why fisheries and wildlife crime should not be treated as a simple offence of possession or illegal taking. It is often a commercial enterprise with logistics, finance, documentation, customer networks, and profit management.

Fisheries Crime and Illicit Proceeds

Fisheries crime is especially significant because fish and seafood are global commodities. Lawful seafood supply chains are already complex, involving vessels, landing sites, processors, cold storage, freight forwarders, exporters, importers, distributors, retailers, restaurants, and consumers. Criminal actors exploit this complexity by inserting illegal catch into legitimate commercial flows.

Illegal fishing can generate proceeds in several ways. A vessel may catch more than its quota and sell the excess. A fisher may harvest during a closed season when scarcity increases value. A group may target high-value species without authorization. A company may misreport catch weight, species, or location. A processor may blend illegal catch with lawful product. An exporter may use false documents to disguise the origin of seafood. A restaurant or retailer may knowingly or recklessly purchase product at a suspiciously low price.

The proceeds of fisheries crime are not limited to the sale price of the illegal catch. They can include the value gained by avoiding conservation rules, licence conditions, monitoring costs, observer requirements, taxes, duties, and traceability obligations. In some cases, the criminal profit may arise from fraudulent access to legal markets. If illegal seafood can be made to appear lawful through documentation, mislabelling, or commingling, it can be sold at full commercial value.

High-value fisheries are particularly vulnerable. Species that are rare, seasonal, difficult to harvest, or in high demand can attract organized criminal involvement. Where a small volume of product has a high market price, criminals have an incentive to use sophisticated concealment, intimidation, corruption, or laundering methods. The risk increases when the product can be quickly transported, processed, frozen, or exported.

Fisheries crime also harms lawful fishers. Those who follow the rules may face unfair competition from those who ignore quotas, underreport catches, or evade costs. Illegal fishing can reduce stock sustainability, damage ecosystems, undermine community livelihoods, and weaken confidence in fisheries management. When criminal proceeds are reinvested into vessels, equipment, transport networks, or corrupt relationships, the problem becomes harder to disrupt.

Wildlife Crime and Illicit Proceeds

Wildlife crime generates proceeds through the unlawful capture, killing, possession, trade, and sale of animals, plants, and wildlife products. The market value may be driven by rarity, status, cultural demand, medicinal claims, luxury consumption, exotic pet ownership, taxidermy, or collector interest. As with fisheries crime, the value can increase significantly as the product moves from source to final buyer.

Some wildlife products are valuable because they are scarce or protected. Protection itself can increase black-market value because legal access is restricted. Criminals may exploit this by targeting endangered species, protected animals, rare plants, or products that are difficult to obtain lawfully. Other products may be valuable because they are associated with prestige, tradition, novelty, or perceived health benefits.

Wildlife crime can involve both domestic and international markets. Domestically, black-market demand may exist for wild meat, trophies, animal parts, or illegal pets. Internationally, wildlife products may be trafficked into luxury goods markets, food markets, traditional medicine markets, online collector spaces, or exotic pet networks. Canada, like many countries, can be a source, destination, and transit point depending on the species and product involved.

The financial structure of wildlife crime can be layered. A poacher may receive a relatively small payment for killing or capturing an animal. A broker may receive a larger payment for arranging the sale. A transporter may be paid to move the product. A document facilitator may be paid to create false records. An exporter may profit from the international sale. A retailer may obtain the highest margin from the final consumer.

This creates multiple points at which proceeds are generated. It also creates multiple opportunities for financial investigation. Payments to low-level participants, unusual business revenue, suspicious international transfers, unexplained cash deposits, trade invoices, freight payments, online sales records, and asset purchases can all help reveal the wider network.

Fraud and False Documentation

Fraud is central to many fisheries and wildlife crime schemes. Illegal product often becomes profitable when it can be disguised as legal product. This requires false or misleading records. Documents may be altered, reused, fabricated, or obtained through corruption. In some cases, the paperwork may be more important than the product itself because it creates the appearance of legality.

In fisheries cases, false documentation may include inaccurate logbooks, landing records, quota records, vessel monitoring data, invoices, export certificates, bills of lading, catch certificates, or food safety documents. The offence may involve misreporting where the fish was caught, how much was caught, what species was caught, when it was landed, or who handled it. If illegal catch is mixed with legal catch, records may be manipulated to make the total volume appear compliant.

In wildlife cases, false documentation may include permits, import or export declarations, certificates of origin, breeding records, veterinary documents, sales invoices, taxidermy records, or claims that the product is antique, captive-bred, farmed, or legally sourced. A live animal may be falsely described as captive-bred when it was taken from the wild. A protected product may be described using a vague or misleading commercial term. A shipment may be routed through a transit jurisdiction to obscure origin.

Fraud can also occur through species substitution. A protected, restricted, or illegally harvested species may be sold as a different species. This can deceive regulators and consumers while allowing illegal product to enter the market. In seafood, mislabelling may also create food safety, allergen, and consumer protection risks.

From a proceeds of crime perspective, fraudulent documentation helps transform illegal value into apparently legitimate revenue. It allows criminals to issue invoices, receive payments, open accounts, satisfy superficial due diligence, and justify possession or export. For this reason, document analysis is a critical part of financial investigation.

Money Laundering Methods

The laundering of proceeds from fisheries and wildlife crime often uses methods seen in other forms of financial crime. The techniques may be simple or sophisticated depending on the scale of the offending, the value of the product, and the level of organization.

Cash is common at the lower levels of the chain. Poachers, illegal fishers, couriers, and small-scale brokers may be paid in cash to reduce traceability. Cash may then be spent directly, deposited gradually into bank accounts, used to purchase equipment, or passed to higher-level organizers.

Commingling is one of the most important laundering methods. A business with legitimate revenue mixes illegal proceeds with lawful income. This is particularly relevant for seafood businesses, restaurants, import-export companies, pet stores, taxidermy businesses, hunting or fishing operations, logistics firms, and wildlife-related retailers. Because the business has a legitimate explanation for revenue, illegal funds can be hidden within ordinary commercial activity.

Trade-based laundering is also highly relevant. Criminals may manipulate invoices, shipment values, quantities, product descriptions, routes, or counterparties to move value and disguise illegal goods. Under-invoicing, over-invoicing, false descriptions, duplicate invoices, and sham transactions can all be used. In fisheries and wildlife crime, trade-based methods are especially powerful because the illegal product may physically move through the same channels as lawful trade.

Nominees and third-party accounts may be used to distance the true controller from the proceeds. Family members, associates, employees, or shell companies may hold accounts, assets, vehicles, vessels, or business registrations. Funds may move through multiple accounts before being withdrawn, transferred abroad, or invested.

Digital payments and online platforms can support retail-level wildlife crime. Sellers may use social media, encrypted messaging, online marketplaces, payment apps, or e-commerce tools. Payments may be fragmented into smaller amounts or described using vague references. While not all online wildlife crime involves sophisticated laundering, digital records can be important evidence of sales, customer networks, and proceeds.

Asset purchases are a common method of integration. Proceeds may be used to buy vehicles, boats, equipment, real estate, jewellery, luxury goods, business inventory, or additional harvesting capacity. In fisheries crime, reinvestment into vessels, gear, storage, and transport can strengthen future offending. In wildlife crime, proceeds may fund further poaching, smuggling, or corruption.

Corruption and Insider Facilitation

Corruption can be a major enabler of fisheries and wildlife crime. Criminals may seek assistance from people who control access, inspection, licensing, documentation, enforcement, or transport. Insider facilitation can occur in public agencies, private companies, ports, processing facilities, logistics firms, markets, or regulated industries.

Corruption does not always involve large bribes. It may involve small payments, gifts, favours, conflicts of interest, family relationships, intimidation, or wilful blindness. An insider may provide information about inspections, approve questionable documents, ignore suspicious shipments, alter records, help move products, or fail to report violations. A business employee may help mix illegal product with lawful inventory. A public official may overlook irregularities because of local pressure or personal benefit.

The proceeds of crime are closely connected to corruption. Bribes are both a cost of doing business and a way to protect criminal profit. Where corruption is present, illegal activity can become more organized, more predictable, and harder to detect. It can also undermine public trust in conservation, fisheries management, border controls, and justice systems.

Financial investigation can help identify corruption. Unexplained wealth, unusual cash deposits, payments from regulated parties, lifestyle changes, repeated association with suspicious businesses, or irregular decision-making patterns may indicate a problem. These indicators must be handled carefully, but they can provide important leads.

Financial Investigation

Financial investigation should begin early in serious fisheries and wildlife crime cases. Waiting until after the physical offence is proven may result in lost opportunities to trace funds, freeze assets, identify higher-level offenders, or prevent dissipation of proceeds. A financial investigation does not replace traditional wildlife or fisheries enforcement; it strengthens it.

The first step is to identify the economic benefit. What was sold? Who bought it? What was the price? Was the product paid for in cash, bank transfer, digital payment, trade credit, or barter? Were there invoices, messages, receipts, shipping records, or account entries? Did the suspect have a lawful source of income that explains their assets? Did the business records match the volume of product handled?

Investigators may examine bank accounts, business records, tax filings, customs documents, shipping records, licence data, vessel records, landing records, phone records, online advertisements, payment platforms, corporate registries, property records, and vehicle or vessel ownership. In fisheries cases, they may compare declared catch with sales, exports, fuel use, vessel activity, processing volumes, and market prices. In wildlife cases, they may compare permits, inventory, breeding claims, sales records, import documents, and customer communications.

The objective is to reconstruct the money flow. This may reveal that a suspect’s role is larger than it first appeared. It may identify additional participants, hidden assets, offshore connections, or a pattern of repeat offending. It may also show whether a business is genuinely legitimate, partly compromised, or primarily a front for illegal activity.

Financial intelligence units can play an important role by receiving suspicious transaction reports, identifying patterns, and disclosing intelligence to law enforcement where legal thresholds are met. Financial institutions may identify unusual account activity linked to wildlife-related businesses, international trade, cash deposits, freight payments, or high-risk counterparties. However, financial institutions need typology awareness because wildlife crime may otherwise look like ordinary trade, retail, or cash business activity.

Asset Recovery and Forfeiture

Asset recovery is central to addressing proceeds of crime. If criminals keep the profits, the offence remains financially attractive. Asset recovery aims to identify, restrain, seize, and forfeit property obtained through crime or used to commit crime.

In fisheries and wildlife cases, assets may include cash, bank balances, vehicles, vessels, fishing gear, processing equipment, business inventory, real estate, luxury goods, digital payment balances, and company assets. Some property may be offence-related because it was used to carry out the crime. Other property may represent proceeds because it was purchased with criminal profit.

Early restraint is important. Once suspects become aware of an investigation, they may move funds, sell assets, transfer property to family members, withdraw cash, alter records, or shift value abroad. Financial investigation should therefore include an asset preservation strategy from the beginning.

Forfeiture also has symbolic and practical value. It communicates that fisheries and wildlife crime is not merely a regulatory breach but a profit-driven offence with serious consequences. It can also prevent offenders from reinvesting proceeds into further criminal activity.

The Role of Financial Institutions and Businesses

Financial institutions and private-sector businesses are important partners in detecting proceeds of fisheries and wildlife crime. Banks, credit unions, money services businesses, payment processors, accountants, insurers, trade finance providers, freight companies, online platforms, seafood businesses, pet traders, restaurants, and import-export firms may all encounter relevant indicators.

Financial institutions may see unusual cash deposits, rapid movement of funds, payments to or from high-risk jurisdictions, trade activity inconsistent with the customer profile, transactions involving animal-related businesses, payments for freight or shipping that do not match declared business activity, or customers using multiple related accounts. They may also see references to species, animal parts, seafood products, permits, or wildlife trade in payment messages.

Businesses in relevant supply chains should conduct due diligence on suppliers, customers, and products. Seafood businesses should understand product origin, chain of custody, catch documentation, species identification, and supplier legitimacy. Wildlife-related businesses should verify permits, breeding claims, import records, and lawful possession. Restaurants and retailers should question unusually cheap, undocumented, or inconsistent products.

Online platforms also have a role. Illegal wildlife sales may occur through social media, marketplace listings, private groups, or messaging platforms. Platforms can strengthen detection through policy enforcement, keyword monitoring, user reporting, cooperation with authorities, and removal of illegal listings.

The private sector does not need to become a wildlife enforcement agency, but it should understand where its services may be misused. Strong compliance controls can make it harder for illegal products and proceeds to enter legitimate markets.

Indigenous Rights, Communities, and Harm

In Canada and other jurisdictions with Indigenous rights and traditional harvesting practices, fisheries and wildlife enforcement must be approached with care, respect, and legal awareness. Lawful rights-based harvesting should not be conflated with criminal exploitation. Indigenous peoples have long-standing relationships with land, water, fish, wildlife, and stewardship systems. These relationships are distinct from organized wildlife trafficking or profit-driven illegal markets.

At the same time, Indigenous communities may be directly harmed by fisheries and wildlife crime. Illegal harvesting can deplete resources that are culturally, nutritionally, and economically significant. Organized criminal involvement in high-value species can create safety risks, undermine local governance, and exploit community vulnerabilities. External poachers or illegal operators may damage ecosystems and reduce access for lawful harvesters.

Effective responses should include Indigenous governments, guardians, knowledge holders, and community-based monitoring where appropriate. Indigenous knowledge can support detection, prevention, and stewardship. Enforcement strategies should distinguish between lawful harvesting, regulatory disputes, and criminal commercialization.

Prevention and Strategic Response

A strong response to fisheries and wildlife crime requires integration. Conservation officers, fisheries officers, police, border officials, financial intelligence professionals, tax authorities, prosecutors, Indigenous guardians, regulators, and private-sector compliance teams each see different parts of the problem. The challenge is connecting those parts.

Prevention should focus on reducing opportunity, increasing detection, disrupting profit, and strengthening lawful markets. This includes better traceability, stronger documentation controls, electronic permitting, supply chain audits, targeted inspections, financial intelligence, beneficial ownership transparency, asset recovery, and public awareness.

For serious cases, agencies should consider parallel financial investigations as standard practice. Where there are indicators of organized crime, commercial-scale offending, corruption, cross-border movement, or repeated activity, the financial dimension should not be optional. It should be built into the case strategy.

Training is also essential. Investigators need to understand financial records, trade documents, corporate structures, digital evidence, and proceeds of crime tools. Financial institutions need to understand wildlife and fisheries typologies. Prosecutors need to understand the environmental and economic harm. Businesses need to understand supply chain risk.

Conclusion

Fisheries and wildlife crime is not only about illegal taking, possession, or trade. It is about money. Illegal fish, seafood, animals, plants, and wildlife products generate revenue. That revenue creates proceeds of crime. Those proceeds are moved, concealed, laundered, and reinvested through methods that overlap with fraud, trade-based money laundering, corruption, tax evasion, organized crime, and commercial supply chain abuse.

A proceeds of crime approach changes the response. It moves attention beyond the person caught with the product and toward the network that financed, organized, transported, documented, sold, and profited from the offence. It asks where the money came from, where it went, who controlled it, and what assets it created.

This approach is essential because fisheries and wildlife crime can be highly profitable and deeply harmful. It damages ecosystems, threatens species, undermines lawful industries, harms communities, weakens regulatory systems, and erodes public trust. If offenders retain the financial benefit, the crime will continue. If investigators, regulators, financial institutions, and businesses can identify and disrupt the proceeds, the incentive is reduced.

The future of fisheries and wildlife enforcement must therefore be multidisciplinary. It must combine environmental expertise with financial investigation, trade analysis, digital evidence, forensic science, community knowledge, and asset recovery. The goal is not only to seize illegal products, but to dismantle the financial structures that make the crime worthwhile.

Looking to Learn More?

The Fisheries and Wildlife Financial Crime Specialist (FWFCS) reflects a growing recognition that financial crime is not limited to traditional banking, fraud, or corporate misconduct. Financial crime can also be deeply connected to environmental harm, illegal fishing, wildlife trafficking, vessel ownership structures, trade-based crime, corruption, sanctions exposure, and the movement of illicit proceeds through legitimate markets.

Fisheries and Wildlife enforcement increasingly requires professionals to look beyond the immediate offence and consider the financial systems, corporate structures, and commercial incentives that enable illegal activity. A vessel, landing record, export transaction, shell company, or beneficial ownership trail may all form part of a broader financial crime picture. Understanding these links is essential for modern investigators, regulators, analysts, and compliance professionals working in fisheries, oceans, wildlife, customs, border, and environmental enforcement.

The CFCA is pleased to support this emerging area of professional education and to contribute to the development of specialized training for those working to detect, investigate, and disrupt financial crime connected to fisheries and wildlife activity.