It is illegal in North Miami to run a charter boat business from your home. Despite this, the city gets reports about them relatively regularly. It’s a challenge to prove that the offense is happening because most offenders, when confronted by authorities, will say that the boat in question belongs to a friend and they were riding. Boat owners will say that the riders are “relatives.”
But North Miami doesn’t take the offense lightly. We investigate reports of such businesses, using the internet to search for websites that offer charter rentals. When we have enough evidence to issue a violation, we take the owners to our Code Magistrate (judge). In once recent case, an owner was found guilty of operating an illegal charter boat rental business, fined $1,000 and given a deadline to take down their website and cease operations. When that didn’t happen, a $5,000 per day penalty began to accrue. We will continue to work on ending this illegal operation.