On Friday, Rico Jerome Miller and Wardell Hall, both of the Bahamas, pleaded guilty to attempting to smuggle six people into Florida.
One would think that the craziest part of the story is that Miller and Wardell managed to sink the 22-foot vessel and had to be rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard. It's not. Things got way more interesting when Homeland Security questioned the passengers.
During interrogation, a Jamaican passenger named Delroy Foster blurted out that he was in the Bahamas to meet a few people to help him bring weed from Jamaica through the Bahamas to the U.S.
According to court documents, Foster was immediately arrested and read his Miranda rights. Maybe Foster didn't grasp the meaning of "you have the right to remain silent," or maybe DHS was coming down hard, or maybe Foster just didn't care, because he just kept blabbing.
Foster said he was tasked with setting up the drug deal because of his knowledge of Jamaica, New York, and Washington, D.C. Foster then explained that in the Bahamas, he met a guy named Shabba who was organizing the drug deal.
At the behest of Shabba, Foster jumped on a boat carrying about 400 pounds of weed bound for Florida. But soon after departing, the captain of the boat got a phone call, turned around, and unloaded the weed at Bimini.
Foster was then told to get on a second boat, which he did. Foster explained that he was "trying to get in" with the weed smugglers, so he didn't ask any questions about where the boat was going or why there were so many people on it. There was no room, so the captain told Foster to sit in between the legs of another passenger on the deck.
Soon after departing, the boat broke down. While it drifted aimlessly, the passengers made small talk, and that's when Foster learned he was on his way to Florida with five other people trying to get into the country illegally.
As Foster carried on with the anecdote, the feds found out he was wanted in Arkansas on weed charges. Foster, cool as ever, said he wasn't, rather he was "sentenced to 30 years in absentia" in that case.
A criminal complaint against the incredibly honest Foster said he was a flight risk and deportable and claimed it was "impracticable to secure his presence by subpoena for future proceedings."
At the end of May, a federal magistrate dismissed the charges against Foster.
Meanwhile, the two captains who were trying to smuggle the people will be sentenced in October. They face up to ten years.
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