April 24, 2014 — A Brooklyn fish dealer pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of wire fraud in connection with a scheme to underreport and sell more than $500,000 of illegally caught fluke.
Alan Dresner, 63, spoke without hesitation before U.S. District Court Judge Sandra Feuerstein in Central Islip in admitting guilt in the case, which resulted from an ongoing federal probe of a fisheries program known as research set-aside.
The program allows fishermen to bid on the right to buy allotments of fish beyond state quotas, and it is popular in New York, which gets among the lowest commercial quota of fluke among Atlantic coastal states. Prosecutors say the set-aside program often is abused, and two Long Island fishermen have pleaded guilty in the probe.
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