BANGOR, Maine — A federal prosecutor has asked that charges against a Tennessee man involved in a scheme to smuggle rare narwhal whale tusks, valued at between $400,000 and $1 million, into the U.S. from Canada be dismissed because the defendant died last month before he could be sentenced.
Jay Gus Conrad, 69, of Lakeland, Tennessee, pleaded guilty Jan.7, 2014, in U.S. District Court in Bangor to one count each of conspiracy to smuggle goods into the U.S., conspiracy to launder money and smuggling goods into the U.S.
He had been free on $10,000 cash bail awaiting sentencing.
Conrad’s attorney, Federal Public Defender James Nixon, filed a motion Friday asking that Conrad’s bail and the $40,000 he had paid toward an expected fine be returned to his family.
A self-employed specialty roofer in the Memphis area, Conrad died April 22, according to his obituary. A cause of death was not listed.
As of Friday, U.S. District Judge had not acted on the motions filed by Nixon or the motion to dismiss the charges filed by James B. Nelson, senior trial attorney with the environmental crimes section of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.
Conrad was described in one court document as “a lifelong collector of wildlife and wildlife parts, including ivory tusks, horns and mounts of various animal species.”
By pleading guilty, Conrad admitted that between November 2003 and sometime in 2008 he was part of a cross-border scheme that smuggled at least 100 narwhal whale tusks into the U.S. without the required marine mammal import permit. Conrad also resold the tusks, according to the prosecution’s version of events to which he pleaded guilty.
Conrad’s co-defendant, Andrew J. Zarauskas, 63, of Union, New Jersey, was sentenced Jan. 12, 2015, to 33 months in federal prison to be followed by three years of supervised release. He also was ordered to pay a $7,500 fine. He was ordered to forfeit $85,089, six narwhal tusks, ranging from 35½ inches to 95 inches in length, and a rare narwhal skull that had two tusks rather than one.
A jury found Zarauskas guilty Feb. 14, 2014, on one count each of conspiracy to smuggle goods into the United States, conspiracy to launder money, smuggling goods into the U.S. and money laundering.
Zarauskas is incarcerated at the Butner Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, according to information on the U.S. Bureau of Prisons’ inmate locator website. His earliest release date is Sept. 15, 2017.
The alleged ringleader in the conspiracy, Gregory Robert Logan, 56, of Woodmans Point, New Brunswick, Canada, was turned over to U.S. authorities March 11, 2016, more than three years after he was indicted by a federal grand jury. He is being held without bail in Maine while awaiting trial. A trial date has not been set.
Logan faces, as did his co-defendants, up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000.