Maryland's White Marlin Open Tourney Kicks Off After Cheating Scandal

OCEAN CITY, MD — Billed as the world's largest and richest billfish tournament, the 2017 White Marlin Open begins Monday, Aug. 7, in Ocean City, MD, and runs through Aug. 11. Organizers are focused on the competition, and putting last year's cheating scandal and subsequent court battle over a $2 million purse behind them.

An estimated 350 boats will compete for about $4 million in prize money with at least one angler winning over $1 million during the tournament. Thousands of vacationers will head to the Eastern Shore beach to watch the White Marlin Open.

The big payoff from the 2016 contest was disputed in court for nearly a year after three New Jersey friends who won $767,000 for catching a 236.5-pound tuna last August claimed an additional $2.3 million prize, but a federal judge on June 14 disqualified the group.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard D. Bennett ruled the White Marlin Open properly applied the rules of the tournament when tournament officials withheld $2.8 million in prize money from Philip Heasley and his crew members aboard the Kallianassa, the tournament said in a post on Facebook. Bennett found Heasley and his Naples, Florida-based crew had not passed polygraph examinations, which were required under the rules of the tournament, and had violated the tournament rules by deploying fishing lines before 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2016, the date they caught the 76.5-pound white marlin, tournament officials said. The ruling came after a two-week trial, tournament officials said.

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The $2,818,662 in prize money the crew of the Naples, Fla.-based boat was expecting to receive has been sitting in an escrow since August 2016. Before such a mammoth payout, the tourney requires that the winner pass a polygraph test. Officials say in their lawsuit that Heasley failed two lie detector tests, as did his boat's captain and shipmates. Tournament officials have told the court “not one person on defendant Heasley’s vessel, ‘Kallianassa,’ passed a polygraph exam,” WTOP reports.

»SEE ALSO: $2.8M Prize for Big Fish Tangled in Court, Cheating Charges

"Throughout the case, the intention of the White Marlin Open directors has been to protect the integrity of the tournament and to ensure that the rules are applied fairly for all participants. The White Marlin Open, like many other tournaments, has found that the use of polygraphs is an effective method of ensuring compliance with the rules. The White Marlin Open is pleased that its reputation for integrity, built over its 43-year history, has been upheld," tournament officials wrote on Facebook.

The tournament, known as the biggest billfish tournament in the world due to the number of teams that participate, has long had a rule requiring any angler and team that wins $50,000 or more in the tournament to take a polygraph exam.

According to court documents, in addition to failing the polygraph test, one of the crew members in a pre-polygraph interview revealed the team had started fishing before the official start time. The complaint also accused the crew of altering the time of the catch of the white marlin on the official catch report to hide the fact they had started fishing before they were permitted to do so.

Jim Motsko, the tournament president, told Delmarva Now that an appeal by Heasley is a possibility, but that he was relieved to have "these 11 months of hell" over.

Preventing Cheaters In Future

FishingBooker, a company that allows anglers to book charters with captains around the world, interviewed their captains working out of Ocean City, for their views on the cheating scandal, said Riley Draper, a representative for the company.

He notes rules restrict captains from fishing on their own terms, such as an official start and end time, a 100-nautical mile radius from the Ocean City inlet sea buoy that cannot be broken, and an official timeframe to fish within. A catch report detailing who caught what fish, when and where is also required.

The effectiveness of the required polygraph test has been questioned by the company, which compiled suggestions on how to improve tourney safeguards. They include:

• Giving each boat a GPS unit so officials can track their locations within the allowed fishing hours
• Requiring all captains to record their catch on cell phone video and submit this to the tournament so organizers have visual proof of who caught which fish and when they caught it.
• Supplying GoPro cameras to each boat so officials can visually monitor the activity on each boat.

“Some things the tournament could do to remove doubt would be to hand each boat a GPS tracking unit at the time that each angler enters the tournament that way they know for certain that boats aren’t leaving before the start time, fishing past the 100-mile radius, or heading back after the restricted time.”

“If you’re honest you have nothing to worry about. The people who fish this want to be the winners of the best tournament out there,” Mark Malamphy, a fishing guide and boat owner from Ocean City who has competed in the White Marlin Open half a dozen times and will compete again this year said in a news release.

With this year’s purse expected to be even larger than last year’s $2.8 million, it’s tempting for an otherwise honest fisherman to get big eyes and drop their lines a few minutes early, he said in the release.

Rich Kostzyu, Damien Romeo and Brian Suschke with their winning 236-pound bigeye tuna at the 2016 White Marlin Open. Photo courtesy of White Marlin Open