Milo Man Sentenced for Damaging Energy Facilities
| U.S. Attorney’s Office April 02, 2014 |
BANGOR, ME—United States Attorney Thomas E. Delahanty, II announced that Michael J. Weston of Milo, Maine, was sentenced yesterday in U.S. District Court in Bangor to one-and-a-half years in prison and three years of supervised release for damaging property of an energy facility. He was also ordered to pay $43,236 in restitution. The charges arose out of Weston’s theft of copper wire from substations owned by Emera Maine, formerly known as Bangor Hydro Electric Company.
According to court records, in 2010 and 2011, Weston cut holes in fencing or cut locks to break into substations at Brooksville, Derby, Enfield, Milo, and Orrington and stole hundreds of pounds of copper ground wire from the facilities. Over that period, Bangor Hydro was the victim of theft at about 19 of its substations. According to Bangor Hydro officials, it is extremely dangerous for anyone without experience with electricity to enter the fenced areas of its transmitting substations and remove wire. Weston sold the stolen copper wire to Chester Gray’s Salvage Yard in Corinth, Maine.
The investigation was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Maine State Police, and the Maine Fire Marshal’s Office.