September 4, 2020 — Convicted New Bedford fishing scofflaw Carlos Rafael has been transferred within the federal Bureau of Prisons to “community confinement” in a move that could be the first step toward his return to society once his sentence is completed.
The Bureau of Prisons confirmed on Wednesday that the 68-year-old Rafael, known far and wide as “The Codfather” when he ruled the New Bedford docks with his seafood empire, was transferred on June 24 to community confinement overseen by the bureau’s Residential Reentry Management Office in Philadelphia. He is about 33 months into his 46-month sentence for massive cheating within the Northeast multispecies groundfish fishery,
The bureau said community confinement means Rafael either is in home confinement or at a residential reentry center — or halfway house — managed by the Residential Reentry Management Office in Philadelphia. It declined to state specifically where Rafael is.
“Carlos A. Rafael is still serving his sentence,” Emory Nelson, a bureau spokesman, stated in an email response to to the Gloucester Daily Times. “His projected date of release from the custody of the BOP is March 4, 2021. For privacy, safety, and security reasons, we do not release information on an individual inmate’s conditions of confinement.”