Ex-School Board member sentenced

Former Grady County Board of Education member Byron Puckett learned his sentence Thursday morning in Federal Court for violations of environmental laws connected to his seafood business in Thomasville.
Federal Judge Hugh Lawson sentenced Puckett to three years probation and ordered him to pay a $25,000 fine.
Puckett and three other defendants pled guilty to violations of the federal Lacey Act, and all four were sentenced to fines and probation.
Junior Wayne Harper, owner and Chief Executive Officer of Harper’s Seafood, Inc., a retail and wholesale seafood business in Thomasville, was fined $50,000 and sentenced to three years probation. Puckett is vice president of the same seafood company.
Charles Stacey Logue and Ronnie Irvin Burdette, both unlicensed fishermen who sold fish to Harper’s Seafood, were each fined $5,000 and sentenced to three years probation.
In addition to purchasing illegally caught fish, Puckett and Harper admitted to making and submitting to the State of Florida false Florida Marine Fisheries Trip Tickets to identify an illegally purchased species of fish as a different species.