Twelve jurors sided Thursday with a Coast Guard petty officer who persuaded them he was not smart enough to help his millionaire mistress defraud the government.
Morris Wade Hughes, 50, of Chesapeake, was found not guilty in U. District Court Thursday afternoon of conspiracy to defraud the United States. Prosecutors alleged that he helped his girlfriend, Yvonne Michelle Peabody, avoid detection after she employed more than illegal immigrants to work on the scallop boats she and her father own as part of their Newport News fishing company. The case against Hughes hinged on e-mails he and Peabody traded during an affair that lasted from to , when he was tasked by the Coast Guard with policing commercial fishing boats, including those owned by Peabody.
Prosecutors said Hughes shared confidential information with Peabody to help her beat the system on a variety of fishing violations and the hiring of illegal immigrants from to In his testimony Thursday, an often-tearful Hughes said his only crime was cheating on his wife with a woman 15 years his junior, whom he met at a fisheries convention.
Attorneys said Peabody was the chairwoman of the law enforcement committee for the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council. Hughes said he wanted to impress Peabody by acting like he was giving her privileged information, but never believed he was doing anything wrong. She runs a multi-million dollar company. Prosecutors said that Hughes e-mailed Peabody a map showing where other fishing boats were working, that he advised her after one of her boats collided with a tugboat, and that he told her to have her illegal immigrant employees leave their ID cards at home to make it more difficult for them to get caught.
Jurors found Hughes not guilty of the felony conspiracy count and two misdemeanor counts of unauthorized access of a government computer, but did find him guilty of two other counts of unauthorized access β for sharing the map and the information about the tugboat crash β and for disclosing confidential information.
