Behind the Badge - The Blundering Poachers
The Blundering Poachers
District Game Warden Sam Feldmann
September 2018, I was patrolling shore fisherman with another officer when we had come across a group of anglers that we had determined to check how the fishing was going.
When we approached the anglers, we found that they had brought bait from out of state.
That wasn’t the biggest issue we had discovered while talking to them that night.
While speaking with the anglers some of them stated that their friend had purchased their license for them.
They had informed me that the friend would be on his way shortly with their license.
The individual that had purchased their license showed me theirs on his phone as a screen shot and had given me two paper copies of his and another’s license.
When looking at the paper copies of the licenses something didn’t seem right with them.
While looking in the licensing system I couldn’t locate any record of the anglers having licenses since the year prior.
The individual that had purchased the licenses was asked how he paid for the licenses.
He had claimed that he used his credit card.
I asked if he had any online account information of the transaction as we could not find that they had licenses in our system.
He changed his story that he used a debit card to purchase the license.
I again asked if he had any way of showing that transaction online to which he changed his story to he used his father's credit card and was not able to provide any proof of a transaction.
I was inspecting the licenses that had been given to me and I found that one of the individuals had the same fishing license number as their license from the 2017 year.
Another license number from the license given to me was one number lower than their 2017 license.
The other two licenses given to me were several hundred thousand license numbers away from where they should be for the time they were purchased.
Also, one of the individual driver's license was not correct on his fishing license.
One of the licenses was supposed to be a 10-day license but the dates showed it was for eleven.
After I had looked at the license closer and looked in the licensing system again, I asked the individual where he bought the license.
He stated he bought the license online when he was at home.
I asked him when he bought the license, he stated he bought them just before leaving their state.
I asked him when he had left.
He stated he left the morning of September 7, 2018.
I asked why two of the licenses had shown they were purchased on September 1, 2018, and why other two license shown being purchased on September 5, 2018.
I also asked if he had bought them at home why the license showed being purchased at the Devils Lake Walmart.
The individual decided to exercise his Fifth Amendment right and would no longer speak with me.
The Individuals were charged for fishing without licenses and the one that had claimed to have purchased the licenses was charged with forgery/counterfeiting of a government document.
When it came to the day of court, to my surprise none of the individuals had shown up ultimately resulting in a warrant of arrest for them.
I didn’t have much hope of ever seeing them again or them having to answer for the crimes committed.
May 2020, I along with two other wardens, had been checking licenses and fish of some shore fisherman.
One of the officers had approached me with two fishing licenses and said he recognized the names but could not be sure why.
I looked at the names on the licenses and immediately knew who they were.
They were the anglers from 2018 with forged licenses.
I contacted State Radio and had them see if they still had valid warrants.
While I was speaking with the dispatcher, I noticed the other officer was speaking to an individual that I had recognized.
It was the angler that had claimed to purchase the licenses.
I went to the other officer and advised him of what was going on and who he was speaking to.
The dispatcher informed me that all four individuals had warrants.
All four individuals were arrested on their warrants and transported to jail.
Once all the individuals had been transported, one of the other officers had informed me that the individual that had forged the licenses had told him that he had applied and was going to be testing to be a game warden in North Dakota that next week.
I looked back on this case and never thought that I would ever see the individuals again after they had skipped court.
It goes to show while working as a warden you never know what to expect or what you will find when doing a simple license check.