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Guide' to serve year in jail for wildlife crimes
Posted: Sunday, January 23, 2011
ANCHORAGE — A Wasilla lodge owner convicted of 23 hunting and fishing related misdemeanors has been sentenced to almost a year in jail.
The Anchorage Daily News reports a judge forced 55-year-old Kurt Lepping to forfeit two airplanes and pay $85,500 in fines for crimes including bear baiting, fishing salmon in closed lakes and fishing without a license.
Alaska Wildlife Troopers say Lepping has continued a pattern of lawbreaking since at least 1997, and call his crimes the worst pattern of violations by a commercial guide in state history.
District Court Judge Catherine Easter also ordered that Lepping be forbidden from ever leading another expedition, and handed down a 10 year ban on Lepping hunting or fishing anywhere in the U.S.