American imprisoned in Russia after sailing over in yacht with rifle to meet woman he met online

A lovesick American has been sentenced to five years in a brutal Russian penal colony after sailing his yacht to the country with a rifle on board in a doomed 11-month plot to meet a woman he met online.

Charles Wayne Zimmerman, believed to be 58 or 59, was convicted of illegally transporting weapons after Russian customs officials discovered a rifle and ammo on board his boat, the Trude Zena, when he docked in the Black Sea port of Sochi on June 19, 2025, the Moscow Times reported.

The North Carolina man told a Russian court he had sailed across the Atlantic and the Mediterranean to meet a woman he had first contacted online.

“He met a girl who lives in Kazan through the internet and decided to travel to Russia to see her on his yacht,” the joint press service of the courts of the Krasnodar Territory said in a press release Monday.

American Charles Wayne Zimmerman has been sentenced to five years in a Russian penal colony for bringing a rifle into the country. Sochi's Central District Court

“Before setting off, he didn’t bother to study the laws of the Russian Federation and assumed that the weapons he kept on his yacht for self-defense should simply always remain on board,” the press release read.

It wasn’t immediately clear when Zimmerman was sentenced, as his arrest and subsequent trial had not been reported in the Russian media before Monday’s announcement.

The name of the penal colony where he will serve out his sentence was not immediately released.

Zimmerman told authorities the gun was for self-defense, and that he had come to Russia to meet a woman he met online. Sochi's Central District Court

Video showing the moment of Zimmerman’s arrest last year on board his 35-foot yacht was released by Sochi’s Central District Court.

The video also showed a black hunting rifle in a case and two boxes of Remington rifle-caliber rounds, some of which appeared to be rusty.

He had set sail from Fort Macon, North Carolina, on July 1, 2024, telling loved ones he was heading to New Zealand, before changing course and sailing toward Europe.

“Zimmerman was last heard from on July 23. He had informed a family member that he would be departing in his sailing vessel en route to the Mediterranean Sea,” the US Coast Guard said in a missing person alert issued in September 2024.

The US State Department did not respond immediately to requests for comment.