LISBON — A man from Canada was fined $8,000 Thursday in U.S. District Court, Syracuse, for trying to smuggle three illegal aliens into the United States at Lisbon Beach.

Michael A. Richard, Prescott, Ontario, was also sentenced to an unspecified amount of time served in federal custody for a Feb. 14 guilty plea to attempting to assist an alien within the United States. He also was ordered to forfeit $4,980 in Canadian currency that the aliens had paid to be brought into the country, according to court documents.

Mr. Richard was located April 15, 2011, in a vehicle at Lisbon Beach, where U.S. Border Patrol agents had arrived to check on a boat crossing the St. Lawrence River without lights. Three undocumented United Kingdom citizens were aboard the boat. They told agents they were trying to reach Yonkers.

Kenneth S. Reid, 47, Johnstown, Ontario, pleaded guilty Feb. 2 to alien smuggling and was sentenced June 18 to two years in federal prison. Mr. Reid admitted he boarded the three United Kingdom residents onto his boat at Prescott and ferried them across the river to Lisbon Beach.

Previously, charges against Mr. Reid’s live-in girlfriend, Wilma W. Winter, were dropped because of a lack of evidence. Charges against two of the United Kingdom residents were dropped after the men agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. The third United Kingdom resident aboard the boat was a minor and was not charged.

Thousands of readers like you have made Northern New York Newspapers the number one ranked website* for local news and sports coverage in the north country.

You can continue on to this article in a few seconds, or you can visit one of our websites:

• Watertown Daily Times
• The Ogdensburg Journal
• Daily Courier-Observer