An American woman, who ingested cocaine pellets to smuggle them to the US, was yesterday sentenced to three years imprisonment after a guilty plea.
Viola Nury Pantaleon, 25, admitted to ingesting a total of 176 grammes of cocaine when she appeared at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court, where Magistrate Sueanna Lovell instituted the custodial sentence and imposed a $50,000 fine.
The remorseful mother of four told the magistrate that she was sorry for her mistake and explained that she wanted to make some money. Magistrate Lovell told her that there were other ways that she could have provided for her children, who will now have to stay without her for sometime.
Pantaleon was intercepted last Friday by Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) officers at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA) after she was seen acting in a suspicious manner.
CANU Prosecutor Oswald Massiah told the court that the defendant is an American citizen by birth and she made arrangements with someone in the United States and in Guyana and consented to travel to this country in an attempt to make money. She arrived in Guyana on October 17, under the pretext of a vacation and was greeted by her Guyanese associate and taken to Eccles, where her accommodation was arranged.
Massiah said she was given a total of 100 cocaine pellets to swallow but she only managed to swallow 19. During the process, she was left alone and so she took the remaining pellets and hid them in dirty linen and gave them to the maid, who dumped them in the trash. She then gave the associate the impression that she had swallowed all the pellets and was taken to the CJIA, where she was seen acting suspiciously by the CANU officers.
She was subsequently taken to the hospital, where she was admitted and x-rayed and it was confirmed that she had strange objects in her stomach. In closing, the prosecutor said she excreted a total of 19 pellets which amounted to the weight of cocaine in the charge.
In handing down the sentence, the magistrate told Pantaleon to use what has happened to her as a learning experience.
