Today, William Sheldon was sentenced in federal district
court in Portland, Maine, to six months in prison followed by three years
supervised release for trafficking juvenile American eels, also called “elvers”
or “glass eels,” in violation of the Lacey Act, announced Acting Assistant
Attorney General Jeffrey H. Wood for the Justice Department’s Environment and
Natural Resources Division.
Sheldon was also ordered to pay a fine of $10,000, forfeit
$33,200 in lieu of a truck he used during the crime, and may not possess a
license to purchase or export elvers as a special condition of his supervised
release. Also sentenced today for elver trafficking offenses was Timothy Lewis,
who received a sentence of six months in prison followed by three years
supervised release, with the special condition that he too may not possess a
license to purchase or export elvers. Lewis was also ordered to pay a $2500
fine. Thomas Reno was also sentenced today to one year probation.
In the factual statement accompanying his guilty plea in
October 2017, Sheldon, a licensed Maine elver dealer, admitted to trafficking
nearly $550,000 worth of illegal elvers, and to taking specific steps to evade
law enforcement detection. Lewis admitted to trafficking nearly $500,000 worth
of illegal elvers, and Reno admitted to trafficking over $100,000 worth of
illegal elvers.
“Today’s sentences establish that the United States will not
tolerate interstate and international transactions involving illegally taken
wildlife,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Wood. “Despite their best
efforts to evade law enforcement, these defendants were ultimately brought to
justice, and we are very proud to have worked with our partners at the federal,
state and local level to achieve this result.”
“With today’s sentencings, the success of Operation Broken
Glass continues,” said Acting Assistant Director Edward Grace for the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, Office of Law Enforcement. “By working with our partners,
we are actively working to dismantle an international wildlife trafficking
scheme that not only harms American eels, but U.S. business owners and others
who rely on healthy ecosystems for both ecological and economical purposes.
Together, we will continue to protect native wildlife and our national
resources for the continuing benefit of the American people."
These sentences were the result of “Operation Broken Glass,”
a multi-jurisdiction United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)
investigation into the illegal trafficking of American eels. To date, the investigation has resulted in
guilty pleas for twenty-one individuals whose combined conduct resulted in the
illegal trafficking of more than $5 million worth of elvers.
Eels are highly valued in east Asia for human
consumption. Historically, Japanese and
European eels were harvested to meet this demand; however, overfishing has led
to a decline in the population of these eels.
As a result, harvesters have turned to the American eel to fill the void
resulting from the decreased number of Japanese and European eels.
American eels spawn in the Sargasso Sea, an area of the
North Atlantic Ocean bounded on all sides by ocean currents. They then travel as larvae from the Sargasso
to the coastal waters of the eastern United States, where they enter a juvenile
or elver stage, swim upriver, and grow to adulthood in fresh water. Elvers are exported for aquaculture in east
Asia, where they are raised to adult size and sold for food. Harvesters and exporters of American eels in
the United States can sell elvers to east Asia for more than $2000 per pound.
Because of the threat of overfishing, elver harvesting is
prohibited in the United States in all but two states: Maine and South
Carolina. Maine and South Carolina
heavily regulate elver fisheries, requiring that individuals be licensed and
report all quantities of harvested eels to state authorities. Operation Broken
Glass targeted illegal elver poaching in states without open fisheries, and the
subsequent illegal transport and export of those elvers.
Operation Broken Glass was conducted by the USFWS and the
Justice Department’s Environmental Crimes Section in collaboration with the
Maine Marine Patrol, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources Law
Enforcement Division, New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife Bureau of Law
Enforcement, Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection
Conservation Police, Virginia Marine Resources Commission Police, USFWS Refuge
Law Enforcement, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Law
Enforcement, Massachusetts Environmental Police, Rhode Island Department of
Environmental Management Division of Law Enforcement, New York State
Environmental Conservation Police, New Hampshire Fish and Game Division of Law
Enforcement, Maryland Natural Resources Police, North Carolina Wildlife
Resource Commission Division of Law Enforcement, Florida Fish and Wildlife
Conservation Commission, Yarmouth, Massachusetts Division of Natural Resources,
North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina Police Department, and the Atlantic States
Marine Fisheries Commission.
The government is represented by Environmental Crimes
Section Trial Attorneys Cassandra Barnum and Shane Waller.
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