Retired Mountie sentenced for narwhal tusk smuggling
• A retired Mountie accused of smuggling narwhal tusks was sentenced Wednesday to five years and two months in a U.S. prison for related moneylaundering counts.
Gregory Logan, 60, of Saint John, N.B., smuggled about 300 tusks valued at US$1.5 million to US$3 million into Maine in false compartments in his vehicle, U.S. prosecutors said. They were shipped from a post office box in Ellsworth, Maine, to buyers across the U.S.
Narwhals, protected in the U.S. and Canada, are known for their spiral tusks that can grow longer than eight feet and are valued for their use in carvings and jewelry-making.
According to the indictment, Logan was working as a Mountie when he began bringing narwhal tusks across the border into the U.S. in 2000. He retired from the police force in 2003.
Prosecutors said he asked his U.S. co-conspirators what they wanted in terms of size and quantity, and then contacted “Inuit co-operatives” in the Canadian north for the tusks.
“Unlawful wildlife trade like this undermines efforts by federal, state and foreign governments to protect and restore populations of species like the narwhal, a majestic creature of the sea,” said acting assistant Attorney General Jeffrey H. Wood of the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.
Logan was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge John A. Woodcock on moneylaundering and conspiracy counts to which he pleaded guilty under an agreement in which smuggling charges were dropped.
He has already served four months of home detention and paid a $350,000 fine in Canada after pleading guilty to a related wildlife-smuggling crime.
Logan was charged along with two U.S. residents. Andrew Zarauskas, of Union, N.J., was convicted and sentenced to 33 months. Charges against a Tennessee man were dismissed.
Prosecutors said Logan was the “organizer of this enterprise.”
“He directed and organized the way in which the tusks were smuggled and shipped as well as the ways in which the proceeds would ultimately be laundered into Canada. In sum, (Logan) was the ‘hub’ without whom the ‘spokes’ could not have succeeded in their joint criminal enterprise,” they said in court documents. Logan has spent 18 months in custody in the U.S after being extradited from Canada in March 2016. The extradition agreement with Canada limited the charges to the money-laundering counts.