Copyright caymancompass
A couple who imported the drug fentanyl have been jailed for nine years and six months. Justice Emma Peters told the Grand Court that Renae Hamilton – who Peters said was the “brains of the operation” – and Dorman Salmon had imported the drug to Cayman knowing the grim toll of lives it had claimed in the US and Canada. She said the pair had “amassed criminal property which they then money laundered by sending it overseas, usually to America or Jamaica” and that some of the cash was moved by unwitting third parties. Hamilton and Salmon were sentenced after they were found guilty by a jury on two charges – importation of 51 fentanyl tablets, weighing 5.2 grams, and money laundering of $70,000. The two also pleaded guilty in a summary case to importing of 3.3lbs of ganga. The court earlier heard that phones owned by the two contained incriminating messages, texts and images that proved their involvement in the trade. They were arrested in April 2022 after a customs official picked out a FedEx parcel addressed to Salmon that had been couriered from California. Packages of ganja and the fentanyl pills, blue and marked with an “M” to make them resemble oxycodone, a strong painkiller, were found mixed in with ordinary items. Sting operation A sting operation was set up after the package was resealed and Hamilton was arrested when she picked it up and put it in her car. She told officers she had collected the parcel for Salmon and was not aware that it contained drugs. Police later discovered cash transfer receipts and cash. More receipts, cash and bank deposit forms, as well a ganja, cellphones and a Lenovo laptop were also found. Salmon, however, told police after he was detained that he did not know anything about the package and that he had not asked Hamiton to pick it up. Peters said the pair, who it was said had been drug dealers for more than a year, had “a loyal customer base” and that they were “professional and experienced drug dealers”. She added that fentanyl use could have “deadly consequences” given the number of deaths attributed to the drug in the US and Canada. Peters told the pair that the money laundering was at “a high level of culpability” because of its cross-jurisdictional nature, the involvement of others, the “significant degree of planning” and length of time it went on. But she said their drug smuggling was “not on an industrial scale” and no evidence of links to or influence over others involved in the supply chain. Lethal overdose risk She dismissed suggestions by defence counsel that the seized pills should have been analysed individually to determine their precise fentanyl content. Peters said, “Fentanyl is controlled under Cayman Islands drugs law in the most restricted category and requires a licence to import it.” She added that the risk of lethal overdose was “almost 100 times higher” than for MDMA, a drug known as ecstasy. Peters said, “It would be reasonable for sentencing to reflect not just the quantity seized, but the potential effects on users.” But she said she had taken into account mitigating factors, such as the lack of previous convictions. The two were jailed for eight years on the fentanyl smuggling conviction and for a year and six months on the money laundering charges, to run consecutively. But she ordered that a year in jail for the ganja offences should run concurrently with the other two sentences.
