Fisherman Get Year In Prison For Illegal Harvesting

BALTIMORE (AP) -- A Tilghman Island fisherman has been sentenced to a year in prison for illegally harvesting and selling more than 185,000 pounds of striped bass.

Forty-one-year-old William Lednum was also ordered to pay almost $500,000 in restitution to the state of Maryland at sentencing Wednesday in federal court in Baltimore.

According to his plea agreement, from 2007 to 2011, Lednum and others used illegally weighted or anchored gill nets and exceeded their maximum daily vessel limit of striped bass.

Prosecutors say the fishermen falsified the permit allocation cards and daily catch records, and shipped and sold striped bass to wholesalers.

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