The owner of a Fort Lauderdale aviation business on Friday was sentenced to two years in federal prison and ordered to forfeit two airplanes for illegally transporting Iridium-192, a hazardous radioactive material to the Bahamas.<\/p>\n
Harold Degregory Jr. also was found guilty in January of making false statements to the government. In addition to prison and forfeiture, he was fined $1,000 and will serve probation after his release, ruled U.S. District Court Judge Adalberto Jordan.<\/p>\n
As the president of H&G Import Export of Fort Lauderdale, Degregory, who lives in West Palm Beach, was accused of transporting the radioactive isotope Iridium-192 to the Bahamas, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He flew the Iridium in a twin-engine Piper aircraft in a container known as a “pig” and then subcontracted the “pig” to a commercial airliner, without the pilot’s knowledge, to take it to Freeport, Bahamas. Degregory never submitted the required manifests, the government said.<\/p>\n
On another occasion he gave customs a form that failed to disclose radioactive cargo.<\/p>\n
The governmen maintains DeGregory was one of a group of pilots who conduct illegal commercial cargo and passenger flight operations under the guise of private, non-commercial activity with the intent of evading the enhanced safety and regulatory oversight given to commercial operators.<\/p>\n
The planes that were forfeited, two Piper Navajo, are valued at $75,000 each.<\/p>\n
Iridium-192 is used in industrial radiography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It should not be forgotten that the man was allegedly smuggling radioactive material for the Bahamas Government, who was, apparently, ‘okay’ with the concept.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}