We can discuss their misdeeds and hope that seeing the punishments they received will keep others from following in these charlatans’ footsteps. But there are other methods we can use to help deter these frauds. Unfortunately, even with all these safeguards in place, cheaters continue to cheat. Violations at small tournaments are Class A misdemeanors, but offenses committed at tournaments with prizes worth $10,000 or more are third-degree felonies, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $10,000. Texas, for example, passed a law against fishing tournament fraud in 1985 and expanded it in 2011 to make altering the length or weight of a fish a violation and to include tournaments for saltwater fish, which are some of the biggest in that state. Several states have passed laws against tournament fraud, and the involvement of police officials or game and fish wardens ranges from administering polygraph tests to winners or those submitting suspect fish to shadowing suspected cheaters on the water. Law enforcement officials also are increasingly involved. Any contestant refusing to submit or abide by the results of a polygraph test is subject to immediate disqualification and withholding of any prizes won.” All prizes will be subject to the results of the test. Many fishing competitions now have a line in their rules that reads something like this: “By the submission of their entries, all contestants, at any time, may be subject to a polygraph test. It is believed that polygraph tests help deter cheaters much as “Speed Checked by Radar” signs help discourage speeding. As a result, tournament directors and organizations will always have to be vigilant to keep cheaters out of the sport. No one failed, but the simple fact that each had to submit to the test or risk losing their winnings exemplified for me a disconcerting fact: As long as there are fishing tournaments, there will always be a few shady individuals who will cheat to win, whether the prize is nothing more than a trophy or as substantial as thousands of dollars.
#Pling cheater series
In this particular case, each of the anglers who placed in the money was hooked up to a lie-detector and asked a series of questions aimed at determining if they had fished according to the contest rules. When the weigh-in was over, the tournament participants were taken one at a time to a room where they were given a polygraph test. I attended a national fishing tournament recently as a media observer.
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