Four watermen charged with violations

Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2009

The U.S. Attorney's Office termed the four-year probe the region's "largest ever investigation into illegal commercial fishing," involving hundreds of thousands of pounds of rockfish. Those newly charged with fish-harvesting violations include Thomas L. Crowder Jr. of Leonardtown and John W. Dean of Scotland.

The separate indictment issued last fall against St. Mary's watermen Joseph Peter Nelson and Joseph Peter Nelson Jr. alleges they caught more than their quota of rockfish with the help of an "unindicted co-conspirator" working as a check-in station operator, to understate the weight of their fish, exaggerate the number of fish caught and thus require the state to issue more tags to allow them to catch more fish.

"Under Maryland regulations, a fisherman may be issued as many tags as he needs to reach his weight quota," the indictment states, but the Potomac River Fisheries Commission's tagging system limits the number of fish caught in the main stem of the waterway. The indictment alleges that the younger Nelson "and others known and unknown to the grand jury would use Maryland-issued tags … to tag striped bass taken from PRFC-regulated waters."

Prosecutors allege that both Nelsons engaged in selling unlawfully caught fish to undercover agents who were posing as out-of-state fish wholesalers.

The prosecutors allege that criminal information documents filed last week in court accuse Crowder, Dean, Charles Quade of Churchton, Keith A. Collins of Deale and Thomas L. Hallock of Catharpin, Va., with taking part in transporting and selling rockfish, "knowing that they had falsely recorded on their permit allocation cards the numbers and weight of the striped bass they caught and failed to accurately record the times when the fish were actually harvested."

The prosecutors identified a company charged in the case as Cannon Seafood Inc., located in Washington, D.C., and owned by Robert Moore Sr., of Falls Church, Va. Robert Moore Jr. of Ashburn, Va., also was charged.

Timothy Maloney, a lawyer for Crowder, said the charges filed last week are dissimilar to last fall's indictment, and that the 2nd District volunteer fire chief has received "an outpouring of support from the community" in a case that involves fish-harvesting issues beyond the defendants. "The system is severely broken," Maloney said. "He's taken his responsibility for it, [but] … the problem is a lot bigger than Tommy Crowder and those [other] individuals."

jwharton@somdnews.com