housands of living beings worth half a million bucks were stripped from their homeland in China and Australia, shipped halfway around the world and sold in the U.S., the district attorney alleged Monday.

And with his trade exposed, it's the crook himself who's in the deep water.According to assistant U.S. attorneys Martin S. Bell and Rachel Maimin, New Yorker Richard Russo has been hiding the poor creatures in a wholesale fish shop in Garnersville, New York, since March 2010 while he peddled the live exotics for astounding sums.

“The defendant is charged with unlawfully importing over a half million dollars’ worth of live exotic coral into the United States,” a justice dept. spokeswoman said.Importing coral from China is illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), an international treaty that protects fish, wildlife and plants that may become imperiled due to the demands of international markets.