Sailor sentenced to six years for smuggling drugs
81 kilograms of cocaine seized from cargo ship at Port of Valleyfield in 2018
A sailor from the Philippines who agreed to help smuggle a large amount of cocaine into Canada, only to be caught with the drugs when it arrived at the Port of Valleyfield, has been sentenced to a six-year prison term.
According to the decision on the sentence recently delivered by Quebec Court Judge Joey Dubois, Roldan De Gorio Tito, 37, of Tiaong, a city in the Philippines, co-operated with police following his arrest at the port in September 2018. He told investigators he was offered $2,000 to smuggle cocaine on board a cargo ship named Jacqueline C before it departed from Guyana.
He also said he was first approached with the offer by a port security guard in Guyana. The security guard handed Tito a cellphone and told him to wait for a call. When the call came, Tito was summoned to a meeting at a Chinese restaurant in Guyana. There he met with a man he was told was a police officer from Vancouver, a woman named Rose and a man he referred to as “the boss.”
Tito told the trio where to hide the cocaine on the ship and it was stored in a cargo hold. Canada Border Services Agency was already investigating the ship before it docked in Valleyfield and when Tito was arrested he told them where they could find what turned out to be 81 kilograms of cocaine.
CBSA also seized more than $43,000 in Canadian currency and four cellphones from Tito’s cabin.
“(The cocaine’s) value on the Canadian market varies between $3.8 million and $6.4 million,” Dubois noted in his decision. “The evidence shows the accused had not agreed at first to move such a quantity, but once the ship departed he found out and agreed to meet the objective in Valleyfield.”
Tito told investigators he was supposed to be paid only $2,000 for his efforts.
Nazir Ahmad Hussain, 50, a Scarborough resident who Tito believed was a corrupt Vancouver police officer, was also arrested in Canada after the cocaine was seized. Tito told investigators he exchanged text messages with Hussain and the woman he knew as Rose before the ship arrived in Valleyfield. He alleged that the plan was for him to hand over the cocaine to Hussain at the Port of Valleyfield. Hussain’s case is still pending at the Valleyfield courthouse. It returns to court in August.
Before he was arrested, Tito had worked for a maritime transportation company for seven years and was the sole provider for his wife and three children.
“He got involved thinking he could make easy money. He states this was a one-time out-of-character event,” Dubois wrote. “He sincerely regrets having committed his crime.”
Prosecutor Annabelle Racine asked that Tito receive a seven-year sentence while his defence lawyer, Clara Daviault, argued for a five-year prison term while noting that her client had no previous criminal record.
Dubois split the difference and decided on the six-year sentence. When the time he had already served was factored into the sentence, Tito was left with a 40-month prison term.