» Fish fraud: An elaborate, multistate undercover investigation of the Great Lakes fishing industry involving an award-winning Door County business finally results in criminal charges.
Illegal harvest of lake trout suspected
An elaborate, multistate undercover investigation of the Great Lakes fishing industry that involved an award-winning Door County business has finally resulted in criminal charges.
But so far, just one Upper Peninsula fish house owner faces only federal misdemeanor counts in the case.
On Friday, federal prosecutors from Michigan and Washington, D.C., filed four counts of “knowingly making and submitting a false record and label for, and false identification of, fish intended to be transported in interstate commerce” on dates in December 2012 and March 2013.
Christopher Peterson is an owner of Peterson’s Fish Market in Hancock, Mich., a business that investigators suspected of engaging in the illegal harvest and sale of lake trout.
Peterson could not immediately be reached for comment. Federal court records did not indicate whether Peterson has a lawyer.
The charges were first reported on the website Upper Peninsula Breaking News.
The sprawling, twoyear investigation was revealed in federal search warrants unsealed in 2014.
U.S. Department of Fish & Wildlife agents set up a fake fish store in tiny L’Anse, Mich., recorded conversations on boats and in bars around Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, and raided a major Sturgeon Bay company, Dan’s Fish, and its affiliates, suspected of buying illegal fish.
A Madison attorney for Dan’s Fish could not be reached for comment on the Peterson charges.
Fishermen and wildlife officials have long been concerned about diminishing stocks of lake trout, sturgeon and walleye in the upper Great Lakes. Thinking violators might be a key reason, in 2012 undercover agents bought and sold tons of what they later claimed was illegally harvested fish from Lake Superior, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.
The fishermen and business owners named in the search warrants include members of various Indian tribes and nontribal fish dealers.