A Pine Ridge Reservation man has pleaded in federal court to illegally selling alcohol on the reservation…where sale or possession of alcohol is banned.

49-year old Thomas Dean Lays Hard of Kyle is free on bond, awaiting sentencing in January…when he could receive up to a year in federal prison.

Lays Hard was carrying 31 half-pint bottles of vodka, three boxes of 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor, a liter of vodka, and over $243 in cash in his car when a tribal police officer stopped him. He admitted to the officer that he was selling alcohol from his car, and this week pleaded guilty to the formal bootlegging charge.