Crown: Couple imported fentanyl in FedEx package

(CNS): A George Town couple charged with drug importation and money laundering used FedEx to bring in a quantity of ganja and 51 fentanyl pills, totalling over five grams, in a package marked as containing boots, t-shirts and a small rug, the crown told a jury on Tuesday. Renae Hamilton and her now estranged partner, Dorman Dowaine Salmon, have both denied the allegations, each blaming the other.

Outlining the crown’s case against the couple, prosecutor Toyin Salako said that pictures of the drugs, messages about selling them on phones that were seized by customs and border control officers, money transfer receipts, weighing scales and ganja recovered from their home all show that they were engaged in the business of drug dealing over a period of at least 17 months.

Prosecutors also contend that during that time, Hamilton and Salmon laundered around CI$80,000 with the help of friends and money transfer companies.

The couple’s illegal business came to light in April 2022 when a CBC officer working at the courier warehouse selected a FedEx parcel purporting to contain the apparently benign items for inspection. It was addressed to Salmon and had come from California.

When it was opened in front of the courier company’s agents, the officer discovered several pouches of ganja labelled with the various strains and the fentanyl pills. Although some t-shirts and the rug noted on the landing slip were in the box, there were no boots. Instead, the boot box contained several packets of ganja, and the pills were concealed inside the small household rug.

A decision was made to reseal the package and do a controlled delivery, allowing it to be delivered or collected, after which customs officers would intervene. On 26 April, Hamilton came to collect the package and customs officers were waiting. After the package was placed in her car, the officers approached and questioned her about the parcel. She told them she was collecting it for her boyfriend.

Hamilton was arrested and searched, during which several money transfer receipts and a few hundred dollars in cash, among other things, were seized. The officers then took her to the home she shared at the time with her then-boyfriend, Salmon, who is the father of her child.

CBC officers searched the residence and found more cash, digital scales, money transfer receipts, bank deposit slips, bags and jars containing ganja, empty jars containing traces of ganja, phones and a laptop.

CBC officers seized around 3lbs and 5oz of drugs in total. Although the crown says the couple were dealing both ganja and the synthetic opioid, the case is in the Grand Court because the charges are focused on that Class A dangerous narcotic and the alleged money laundering fuelled by the drug dealing business as a whole.

When Hamilton was interviewed, she told the authorities that she had collected the package on behalf of Salmon and knew nothing about the drugs. She said a friend had sent him the parcel containing boots, clothes and a small rug.

Shortly after the search at the couple’s home, officers arrested Salmon, who was working on the construction of the Health City hospital near Camana Bay. He told the officers he knew nothing about any package, had not asked her to collect anything on his behalf, and that it had nothing to do with him. Officers searched his work van and found more money transfer receipts.

However, Salako told the jury that the phones seized during the searches stored messages, voice notes and images sent and forwarded between them about selling drugs, their customers, the strains they had available, prices and quantities, as well as complaints from customers about the quality of the ganja. There were also images on the phones of similar fentanyl pills and conversations about getting some 300 pills.

Officers also found an image of a receipt on Salmon’s phone for the goods purchased at Walmart that were supposed to be inside the package sent via FedEx. Salako told the jury that this and other evidence showed the degree of planning in the couple’s drug dealing business.

She said that during the course of the investigation, the authorities found that the couple had used friends and acquaintances to help them with the money transfers. When investigators spoke with some of those individuals, they learned that Hamilton and Salmon had told them that they had exceeded their limits or were banned from using a particular service and needed to send money quickly to Jamaica to buy things for a house that Salmon was building there.

Salako said that on each of the occasions confirmed by those involved, either Hamilton or Salmon had enlisted their help to send money. They had then given them written details of the transfer and had either accompanied them and taken the receipts immediately afterwards, or the helpers had gone alone and sent the receipts to the couple via phone.

Enlisting friends demonstrated the couple’s aim of concealing the true source of the cash and hiding it from the authorities, Salako said.

Following several weeks of investigations, Hamilton and Salmon were interviewed in November 2022 for a second time. They were asked about the images of drugs on their phones, the messages about drug dealing, and the receipts. Hamilton gave a ‘no comment’ response. Salmon said the messages were codes between himself and Hamilton, but he was unable to explain what they meant.

“It’s the prosecution’s case that this was a joint enterprise or businesses between Hamilton and Salmon to import drugs into the Cayman Islands to sell for profit,” the prosecuting attorney told the court as she concluded her opening statement. “There cannot be any doubt that each knew what they were doing and the nature of the business arrangement,” she added.

The case continues.

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