A year after a prime minister called her cruel on live television, Samantha Strable stood in a Wyoming courtroom facing a different kind of reckoning

Samantha Strable, a 26 year old content creator also known online as Sam Jones or Samantha Jo, has been sentenced in a Wyoming courtroom following a hunting violations case. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department opened its investigation after receiving an anonymous tip that she was hunting without a guide. She ultimately faced eight charges connected to the case.

As reported by LadBible, Strable pleaded no contest in Sublette County Circuit Court to a charge of nonresident hunting without a guide in a wilderness area. She was sentenced to 12 months of probation and ordered to pay a $575.40 fine, along with a 180 day jail term that the court suspended. Prosecutors dropped the remaining seven charges, which had included allegations of fraud, false swearing, and taking an animal without a proper license or during a closed season.

According to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, the case centered on questions about Strable’s residency status. State law requires a hunter to be physically domiciled in Wyoming for 365 consecutive days before qualifying for a resident license, and residency can be lost if someone spends 180 days or more outside the state within a calendar year. An affidavit obtained by investigators indicated Strable had been in Wyoming for only seven days in 2024 and one month the following year, despite continuing to apply for resident tags to hunt elk, antelope, black bears, and mountain lions.

This isn’t Strable’s first brush with public backlash

Strable’s attorney, Nate Jeppsen, said during the court appearance that his client had not intentionally violated state game laws, though he acknowledged she should have understood the requirements. The case arrives just over a year after Strable became the center of a different controversy involving wildlife in Australia. She went viral there after posting footage of herself picking up a baby wombat from the roadside while its mother appeared to chase after her, an unrelated retail dispute over a damaged TV making headlines the same week.

The video drew sharp criticism from animal rights advocates and Australian officials. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the influencer should “try a crocodile” instead if she wanted a real animal encounter. The Wombat Protection Society also condemned the clip, describing it as an act of mishandling a joey for social media attention, and noted that wombats are a legally protected species in Australia that maintain close bonds with their young.

Strable later deleted the original post and said she had only held the animal for about a minute before returning it to its mother. In an apology posted online, she wrote that the moment “was not staged, nor was it done for entertainment.” She said she acted quickly out of concern for the joey and acknowledged she failed to give viewers enough context at the time.

Strable is based in Montana and had continued applying for Wyoming resident licenses despite living out of state for extended periods, according to the residency records cited in the case. The story surfaced the same week as an unrelated viral dispute over a restaurant tipping mix-up that drew separate attention online. Wyoming officials maintain that determining residency status before purchasing a hunting or fishing license is the responsibility of the applicant, not the state.

With her plea entered and sentence handed down, Strable’s Wyoming case has concluded, though the suspended 180 day jail term remains contingent on her compliance with the terms of probation.