WASHINGTON: A former US Customs and Border Protection officer was placed on a year of probation this week for making false entries into a cash register when he collected payments from truckers entering the U.S. from Canada.
U.S. District Judge David Hurd imposed the sentence on Todd Tyo, who was convicted by a jury in 2013 of two counts of making false entries into the U.S. Customs and Border Protection cash register in 2011 at the point of entry in Alexandria Bay.
Federal prosecutors had asked Hurd to sentence Tyo to 90 days in jail and impose a fine of $20,000.
Hurd spared Tyo any jail time, and fined him $50 for each of the two convictions. The judge told Tyo that he and his family had gone through enough, Tyo said afterward.
After the jury convicted Tyo two years ago, Hurd threw out the convictions. But a federal appeals court reinstated them last year.
Tyo, 50, of Heuvelton, St. Lawrence County, was a Customs officer for 15 years. He said he was forced to resign last week because of the convictions.
The jury acquitted Tyo of two other counts of making false entries into the cash register and of theft of government funds and concealing evidence.
He was convicted of taking cash entry fees of $10.75 from two truckers, in April and July 2011, then falsely entering “No sale” into the government computer. He was not convicted of stealing any money.
Tyo said he believes his supervisors were out to get him with bogus charges partly because he was helping the union.
“It was a set up, the whole thing,” he said.
