Long U.S. prison stay for Canadian drug mule who used river

Windsor man fled police, but caught in suspicious boat two weeks later

DETROIT—A Canadian man who was found unconscious and tethered to 185 pounds of marijuana in the Detroit River was sentenced Wednesday to about six years in a U.S. prison.

The capture of Glen Mousseau

last June capped a strange few weeks in his dealings with U.S. law enforcement. The case also revealed extraordinary steps that his smuggling operation took to move drugs and cash between the two countries, even using Seabobs, a watercraft that can propel people underwater.

“The international nature of the smuggling here is noteworthy and in many ways more alarming than the run-of-themill drug distribution conspiracy,” U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland said.

Mousseau of Windsor, Ont., was first stopped in May while driving a rental truck in St. Clair County, Michigan, and possessing roughly $100,000. The government said he confessed to being a smuggler who served various criminal groups.

Investigators said Mousseau quickly agreed to help agents in a methamphetamine bust. But he fled a hotel, leaving behind phones, a laptop and a diving suit, and somehow dashed back to Canada.

He turned up two weeks later in the overnight darkness of the Detroit River as border agents pursued a suspicious boat. Carefully wrapped packages weighing 265 pounds were tied to Mousseau, including marijuana totalling 185 pounds.

“He was a mule. That’s all his participation was,” defence attorney Victor Mansour said. “He was the one who was thrown into the water. He almost died.”

But the government noted that Mousseau, 49, already has a 32-year criminal record in Canada.

Mousseau urged the judge to “see some good in me.” His lawyer asked for a 3 1/2-year sentence, but Cleland chose about six years.