Several Florida fisherman and seafood dealers have been charged in a federal indictment that claims they illegally caught and sold thousands of pounds of fish.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the undercover operation was one of the farthest-reaching the Gulf Coast has seen in the past 20 years.
The men -- who face decades in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines -- are accused of illegally dealing in red snapper (like the ones at left), redfish, red grouper, gag grouper and of selling Vietnamese catfish as grouper. The Panama City News Herald has more.
The indictment came out of Georgia, where investigators said two co-defendants ran a retail and wholesale business called Road Runner Seafood.
Read the criminal indictment here: Download 1-08-cr-00032-WLS-RLH.zip
I see people keeping illegal fish all the time, but never to this level! People have so little common since, it's not like the game wardens turn blind eyes to this sort of thing, they are very aggressive at checking fish.
Posted by: gainesville crime scene cleanup | July 30, 2008 at 09:09 AM