The outlaw Roland Maw can’t seem to cut a break.
After a Juneau Superior Court judge tossed out Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) fraud charges against him earlier this month, he pleaded that between the costs of fighting the state and the damage to his reputation he’d suffered enough.
A supporter of Gov. Bill Walker, a one-time member of the board of the politically powerful United Fishermen of Alaska, and the former big cat of the Kenai in his role as executive director of the United Cook Inlet Drift Association, Maw was hoping the state would go easy and drop the charges against him.
It didn’t happen. Instead he was re-indicted.
The 73-year-old from Kasilof by way of Montana, or vice-versa, now faces 12 felonies accusing him of lying to obtain Permanent Fund Dividends. Maw has already been convicted in Montana of claiming to be a resident of both that state and Alaska.
It is illegal to claim residency in more than one state. Maw claimed to be a Montanan to obtain cheaper state hunting and fishing licenses. He allegedly claimed to be an Alaskan to get PFDs and a good-for-life hunting and fishing license available to any resident over 60.
Maw in 2015 served less than a month on the Alaska Board of Fisheries before resigning in the wake of the discovery of his claims to residency in two states.
Maw owns homes in Kasilof and Dillon, Mont. He told the Alaska Dispatch News the Montana home is for his wife, Alaine, who grew up in the Dillon area and continues to live there, according to her husband, for ” health reasons. ”
The average annual temperature in Dillon is about 10 degrees warmer than in Kasilof, though the Montana city is far from the Sunbelt. The temperature there Friday was 13 degrees.
Maw has entered a plea of not guilty to the Alaska charges. A trial is now set for April, which leaves Maw free to aid UCIDA lobbying when a new Fish Board that starts consideration of Cook Inlet fisheries in Anchorage in February.
Since Maw’s legal problems began, he has insisted that he is innocent even though the PFD application clearly spells out that anyone who has “obtained a resident hunting, fishing, or trapping license from another state or country” is not eligible for a PFD.
Court filings also show the state has put together a thick dossier on Maw’s travels out of Alaska that show, according to the state, that he also didn’t spend enough time in Alaska to qualify for a PFD.
Great description of Maw as an “outlaw”.
He was first labeled as someone that the Board of Fish wanted nothing to do with, when he attempted to get an interview with them for the Commissioner of Fish and Game position over a year ago now. Thus his reputation (he worries about) had preceded his problem with Alaska and Montana Courts, at least with the entirety of Alaska’s Board of Fish.