Pilot who lied on FAA form sentenced
A commercial pilot who lied on his annual Federal Aviation Administration license renewal for four consecutive years must complete 45 days of work release after being found guilty of making false statements to a government agency.
Clifton Ray Dyer, of Kennewick, could have faced up to six months in jail after pleading guilty to four counts of making false statements.
The 47-year-old commercial pilot was indicted last October by a federal grand jury and pleaded guilty to the counts in early December in U.S. District Court.
He was sentenced Thursday during an appearance in Yakima before U.S. District Court Judge Lonny Suko.
In addition to 45 days of work-release confinement, the judge ordered Dyer to complete 120 hours of community service and placed him on three years of supervised release.
He also must pay a $400 special penalty assessment, but a fine was waived by the judge.
U.S. Attorney Jim McDevitt, who prosecuted the case, said Dyer failed to disclose to the FAA that he had been convicted in Benton County in June 1998 of second-degree child rape and was undergoing sex offender treatment.
He was sentenced to 78 months in prison for that crime, but all but six months was suspended.
By failing to disclose those details, Dyer “knowingly and willfully falsified” his annual applications for FAA medical certificates in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002, the indictment said.
Under its administrative rules, the FAA could only revoke Dyer’s license for one year for the falsifications, leading to the referral to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for criminal prosecution, McDevitt said.
It wasn’t Dyer’s first run-in with the FAA.
Following a November 1998 fatal airplane crash in the Columbia River, near Vantage, he was cited for carelessness and recklessness by the federal agency.
He piloted a Cessna 182 that crashed and sank in the river after striking power lines.
Two agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Michael Callow, 50, and Kathless Mary Cheap, 48, both from Oregon, died in the crash, which occurred while they were conducting waterfowl surveys on the Hanford Reach. Dyer was critically injured.