Tag Archives: U.S. District Court in Portland
Five Maine fishermen plead guilty in herring scheme
The trial of five fishermen accused of a multi-year scheme to sell unreported Atlantic herring and falsify fishing records ended Monday when the defendants all pleaded guilty to lesser offenses. No sentencing date has been scheduled. The plea agreements call for a maximum sentence of a year in prison, a fine of up to $100,000, and up to one year of supervised release. The defendants, however, may end up with no jail time. Fifty-nine counts against the five defendants were dismissed in exchange to the pleas on lesser charges. The trial began last week in U.S. District Court in Portland and was expected to last nine days. The five defendants who pleaded were Glenn Robbins, 76, of Eliot; Ethan Chase, 46, of Portsmouth, N.H.; Neil Herrick, 48, of Rockland; Stephen Little, 58, of Warren; Jason Parent, 51, of Owls Head; and Western Sea, Inc. more, >>click to reads<< 16:20
Skipper says cartel loaded drugs for his ill-fated voyage
B.C. skipper John Stirling, who has a long history of international drug smuggling, provided the details of the journey that landed him in a U.S. prison to investigators after his April 2019 arrest. Now he is trying to get the candid statements made to U.S. authorities thrown out of court. And he is also alleging in motions filed in U.S. District Court in Portland that the Americans had no right to arrest him as a Canadian sailing in international waters at the time.,,Stirling’s drug-trade history dates to 1990, In 2001, he was arrested on his boat, the Western Wind, in the Strait of Juan de Fuca with 2.5 tonnes of cocaine aboard. American authorities turned him over to the RCMP but he was never charged. >click to read< 10:16
Cushing fishing boat captain gets 4 years for causing deaths of 2 crewmen
Christopher A. Hutchinson, 30, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Portland by Judge D. Brock Hornby for two counts of seaman’s manslaughter. The bodies of 27-year-old Tom Hammond and 15-year-old Tyler Sawyer were never found. Hutchinson was the captain of the lobster boat No Limits, which sank near Matinicus Island in a storm on Nov. 1, 2014. He purchased 20, 30-milligram oxycodone pills from two separate drug dealers, smoked marijuana with Sawyer’s father, and drank a rum and coke at a Rockland restaurant on Halloween 2014, court documents say. He then departed for a fishing trip at 1 a.m. from Linda Bean’s dock in Tenants Harbor. Rain was beginning to fall, and the forecast called for a gale. >click to read<22:59
UNDERCOVER OPERATION – Maine elver buyer caught in federal regulators’ net
He drove a super-sized pickup truck with “EEL WGN” plates, carried a bank bag stacked with cash and, as long as you had a bucket full of elvers, William “Billy” Sheldon didn’t care where they came from, according to documents unsealed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Portland. In a 42-page search warrant affidavit, federal wildlife investigators allege that for two years, Sheldon traveled between South Carolina and Maine ,. Sheldon has not been charged in the case. Read the rest here 11:13
