A Canadian seafood company helped buy geoduck kingpin Doug Tobin's fishing boat and finance his $1.5 million Puget Sound clam-poaching ring — all in exchange for exclusive rights to resell the stolen shellfish, according to a lawsuit filed by the Washington state Attorney General's Office.

A year after Tobin was sentenced to 14 years in prison for making off with nearly 100 tons of shellfish in the region's oddest and most sophisticated wildlife-poaching ring, the Attorney General's Office accused a Richmond, B.C.-based company of fronting him much of the cash to get started.

The state is seeking millions of dollars in civil damages and is trying to get Clear Bay Fisheries to release a lien it has on Tobin's 42-foot boat, The Typhoon, once valued at nearly $400,000.

Douglas Tobin received a 14-year prison term.

Clear Bay is one of only a few Canadian companies that distribute nearly all of Puget Sound's lucrative geoduck harvest to groceries and markets from California and New York to Hong Kong and Shanghai. State officials maintain that when company officials agreed to work with Tobin and loan him money, "they did that with knowledge that the geoduck was being taken illegally."

"We've talked to a lot of witnesses, and we've reviewed a lot of financial information, which showed that Clear Bay and Tobin were really connected," said Mary Sue Wilson, senior assistant attorney general. "We have witnesses who observed Clear Bay officials working with Doug on the vessel and meeting with Doug Tobin."

Clear Bay President Jeffrey Albulet, however, insists he did nothing wrong, and that he was just one of dozens of people who were duped by the charismatic Tobin during his 18-month wildlife-poaching spree.

"Hey listen, the man, as an individual, seemed like a nice, funny person," Albulet said. "It's just that he was a con artist. He knew how to con people. Unfortunately, he got me. And he got me for a lot of money."

Assistant Attorney General Karolyn Klohe said the state also is seeking to have Clear Bay banned from participating in Washington's $40 million-a-year legal geoduck trade.

From early 2000 to late 2001, Tobin, 53, led an ever-changing cast of roughly 30 people in a bizarre smuggling ring that required divers to crisscross south Puget Sound in his boat — almost always at night, frequently without running lights — to steal geoduck clams from the seafloor. The crews forged documents and sold at least 65 tons of the oversized clams to Clear Bay in Canada.

Yesterday, the state argued that Clear Bay had fronted $64,000 to buy Tobin's boat and later loaned him $40,000 in cash to keep the cheap geoduck coming across the border. The state also said it has witnesses who have convinced them Clear Bay officials knew Tobin was committing crimes.

"It's a combination of people who have told us they [Clear Bay officials] went on the boat with Mr. Tobin at night, when harvest is not allowed," Wilson said at the Attorney General's Office. "There's also the fact that the product was available to Clear Bay at times when it wasn't available to anyone else; the company should have known that it was illegal."

Wilson said the state wants the money put toward the cost of the investigation — but also wants to send a message that geoduck poaching won't be tolerated.

"That's important for the health of the resource and public health," she said, pointing out that poachers, including Tobin, often took clams from areas closed because of contamination.

The state Fish and Wildlife agents who eventually brought Tobin down said he had learned many of the tricks of his trade during the 1990s, when the fearless and often-funny fisherman served as the federal government's chief undercover informant in the illegal geoduck trade.

Tobin eventually pleaded guilty, and 27 others have since been charged with related crimes.

Tobin was sentenced to prison at Airway Heights, outside Spokane, but is now in a Pierce County jail awaiting another trial. He and his brother John Tobin, who pleaded guilty to trafficking in stolen property for his role in the geoduck heists, also are charged with arson.

"Tobin and his brother were on another man's 75-foot wooden boat during a night when they were doing their geoduck poaching and set fire to it," said Tom Moore, a Pierce County deputy prosecutor. The owner "was also was dealing in geoduck, and they may have thought he was flooding the market and driving the price down. There's also a theory that there was other bad blood between him and the two Tobin brothers."

Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com