Each February, for 16 days, fishermen are allowed to fish for sturgeon in Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin, with each sturgeon caught must be registered with a state control station.
In the same place, the inspectors remove the reproductive glands filled with eggs from the adult female sturgeon in order to carry out research work with them. However, Ryan Koenig, an in-house Natural Resource Officer who oversees the catching season for these large fish (usually jailed), decided to capitalize on the process. On several occasions, he donated eggs to a local businessman, from which he made black sturgeon caviar.
This caviar is highly regarded in the market – depending on the variety, it can cost $ 100 per pound or more. Investigations into suspicious sturgeon egg manipulation began in 2017, and in January 2020, investigators went to Koenig. At first, he denied everything, but later admitted that instead of throwing away the eggs used for research, he handed them over to the manufacturer of sturgeon caviar, for which he received jars of the finished product for a total of about $ 20,000 as a “barter”.
Koenig is suspended from work during the investigation, and he faces up to 9 months in prison.
Newspaper headline:
Illegal barter