Tennessee Criminal Lawyer Blog

Everyone knows someone who has lied, or still lies frequently, about the size and number of the fish they have caught. For whatever reason, exaggerating about the size of “the big one” that a fisherman has landed is as old as fishing itself. Most of the time everyone just assumes a fish was probably a few pounds lighter and a few inches shorter than the angler is claiming and moves on, no harm done.

Things didn’t work out that way for a man from Garland, Texas, for whom lying about the size of his fish has led to jail time and a lengthy probation sentence. The man was participating in a professional bass fishing tournament for which the grand prize was a bass boat, valued at $55,000. In order to emerge victorious and claim said boat, the man stuffed his bass with a lead weight before the weigh-in. Unfortunately for him, lead weights, unlike dead fish, sink when they are placed into a tank of water. Officials reportedly noticed that the fish had nearly sunk to the bottom of the tank and confronted the angler, who admitted to “stuffing” his fish and helped officials uncover the weight.

While the man probably contemplated that he would be disqualified from the tournament, he may not have considered the fact that he would be facing criminal charges. In Texas, just like Tennessee, a person can be charged with theft if he or she comes up with some sort of fraudulent scheme to exercise control over property that does not belong to them. In this case, the man was trying to obtain possession of a $55,000 boat that he had not rightfully won. Also similar to Tennessee, Texas grades the theft according to the value of the property that was stolen, so the man was charged with theft of property between $20,000 and $100,000.

In Tennessee, the man would have been charged with Class C felony theft of property between $10,000 and $60,000. Such a felony is punishable by up to fifteen years in prison and a fine of $10,000. This situation shows that criminal charges that carry serious prison time can often arise where the person may not even expect to be charged. Tennesseans who are looking at a charge of theft should contact an experienced criminal defense attorney who can assist them in disputing the charges and obtaining a fair resolution to the case.

Source: http://cbs11tv.com/pets/fish.tale.lead.2.1632321.html