A seventy-one-year-old woman who pleaded guilty to importing cocaine into the US from Guyana has been jailed for 18 months by a New York Court.
Olive Fowler was held on April 11, 2015 at the JFK Airport in New York with cocaine in a girdle after arriving on a flight from Georgetown, Guyana.
On July 15, 2015 Fowler pleaded guilty before Magistrate Judge Lois Bloom to a two-count indictment of the importation of cocaine and possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. She was sentenced on March 2, 2016 to 18 months on both counts but the sentences are to run concurrently, according to court documents seen by Stabroek News. Upon release from imprisonment Fowler will be on supervised release for three years.
The defendant told US agents that she agreed to carry cocaine into the US because she needed money.
Fowler had slipped through the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Timehri with the cocaine undetected and the US government argued before the judge that this was likely just one of several such missions she had undertaken.
The net weight of the cocaine that was found was 1.658 kilograms. According to the court documents, Fowler told US agents who questioned her that she was told where to find the cocaine-filled girdle at the Timehri airport and what to do with it on arrival in New York. She said she was told to go to a hotel near to JFK but had not been told which one. The US did not find this credible and further investigations determined that Fowler had gone to the Radisson JFK Airport Hotel on several prior trips.
“Upon further investigation, agents obtained information indicating that, contrary to the defendant’s statement that she did not know where she planned to go once she arrived at JFK, the defendant had planned to stay at Radisson JFK Airport Hotel all along. At the time of her arrest the defendant was in possession of two cellular phones. One of the defendant’s cellular phones showed that prior to boarding her flight to JFK with the cocaine, the defendant had exchanged over a dozen calls with a Guyanese phone number. Agents obtained phone records showing that shortly after the defendant’s arrest, the Guyanese number made two phone calls to the Radisson Hotel JFK Airport”, the court documents said.
Customs and Border Protection records showed that Fowler had earlier travelled from Trinidad to JFK on January 17, 2015 and departed from JFK to Trinidad on January 22, 2015. The court documents said that agents found records showing that Fowler stayed at the Radisson for the entire trip from January 17 to January 22 at a cost of US$1,100. Agents also found records to show that after arriving in the US on January 17, 2015, Fowler wired US$200 and US$300 to her family in Guyana on January 19 and 20, 2015, respectively.
Arguing for a sentence of between 24 and 30 months for Fowler, the US cited her claim that she is seen as a “guiding force” in her community and said particularly in light of the defendant’s position and influence in her community, an appropriate sentence is required to send a message to those in her community that even older players in the smuggling of drugs will be held responsible for criminal conduct.
“The defendant’s cataracts and the separation from her family and community caused by her incarceration do not remove this case from the heartland of drug importation cases. Indeed, evidence that the defendant misled agents and likely engaged in other drug importation trips in November 2014 and January 2015 provide ample reason for the court” to sentence within the guidelines, the US attorney argued.
The US attorney further said “Records obtained in the investigation further established that the defendant had previously stayed at the same Radisson Hotel JFK Airport during her trips in November 2014 and in January 2015, and that she paid significant sums to do so. Moreover, the defendant’s wire transfers back to Guyana only days after her arrival in the United States during the November 2014 and January 2015 trips indicate, more likely than not, that the defendant imported narcotics into the United States during those trips and wired proceeds from those trips back to her family”.
