A federal court judge has sentenced the owner of a floating strip club vessel formerly operating out of Kodiak to five years’ probation and a $10,000 fine for violating the Ruse Act and making false statements to U.S. Coast Guard officials.
U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Gleason handed down the sentence on Jan. 25 for Darren Byler, 56, of Zachar Bay on Kodiak Island.
Byler was convicted in December 2015 after an 11-day trial.
Evidence presented at the trail showed that Byler and Kimberly Riedel-Byler were owners of the Wild Alaskan, the strip club vessel anchorage in Kodiak Harbor from June 2014 through November 2014. The vessel had a customer bathroom for patrons and an employee bathroom for dancers and other staff.
Federal prosecutors established at trial that sewage from these bathrooms was plumbed to flow directly overboard into the waters of Kodiak Harbor.
When asked to produce documentation about his sewage disposal from the Wild Alaskan, Darren Byler gave the Coast Guard a false ship’s log, which claimed that 1,500 gallons of raw sewage from the vessel were disposed of t the Pier 2 sewage disposal facility at Kodiak Harbor in July of 2014. The false log also reported that another 800 gallons of sewage on five additional occasions in September and October of 2014 was disposed of at sea beyond three nautical miles.
“There is a need for the sentence to afford some degree of adequate deterrence to the many other mariners that are in our state,” Gleason said at the sentencing.
The case was investigated by multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Coast Guard, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Kodiak Police Department.
