PORTLAND — A Paris man pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to being a felon with a firearm.

David Foster, 39, had pleaded not guilty to the charge earlier this month at his arraignment in U.S. District Court. The felony is punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison and carries a maximum fine of $250,000.

He remains free on conditions of release pending sentencing. A date was not set.

According to court files, Foster was convicted in 1995 of felony theft and burglary and a separate higher-level burglary, along with felony burglary of a motor vehicle.

He is accused of having a Savage 110 .270-caliber hunting rifle in November 2015.

Co-defendant Andrew Bean, 51, also of Paris, pleaded guilty last month in federal court to possessing a firearm after being convicted of four felonies. He, like Foster, will be sentenced after the completion of a pre-sentence investigation report by the U.S. Probation Office.

Unlike Foster, Bean is being held in federal custody in Portland pending sentencing.

Bean’s brother, Stephen, 55, of Norway, is the third co-defendant in the case. He is charged with two counts of being a felon with a firearm. He pleaded not guilty to charges last month at his arraignment. Like Foster, he was released on conditions pending trial.

The trio had been charged earlier in state court with fraudulently obtaining hunting licenses and being prohibited persons with firearms.

The state and federal charges stem from an incident in November 2015 when the men were charged by the Maine Warden Service on a property adjacent to a Paris farm, where the brother of two of the men charged had shot and killed 18-year-old Megan Ripley in an unrelated hunting incident in 2006.

In addition to any prison time, Andrew Bean and Foster each face a maximum of three years of supervised release on a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. They can be sentenced to a maximum of two years for violating the conditions of post-conviction release.

cwilliams@sunjournal.com

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