He had already cleared immigration and customs at New York’s JFK Airport, but only made it to a nearby hotel before being busted while excreting cocaine pellets.
Guyanese, Jermaine Smartt, is now a guest of the Brooklyn Metro Detention Centre after he was charged with cocaine trafficking.
The 40-year-old was busted at the JFK Inn Hotel in Queens, New York, on April 6, 2017, just hours after arriving on a flight from Guyana.
U.S Agents swooped down on the hotel and when they got to the room Smartt was in, he was found with with several pellets of cocaine. He led the agents to his suitcase after after allowing them into his room, and gave them permission to search his suitcase.
After being questioned, the man admitted that he might still have additional pellets in his stomach and he was taken to the medical facility at the JFK airport, where an x-ray confirmed the presence of additional pellets in his body.
At the airport medical facility, he was detained until he passed out all of the additional pellets. In total, agents took possession of 37 pellets of cocaine inclusive of the ones that were found in the hotel. It is suspected that he may have been in the process of excreting the pellets, when the hotel raid was launched.
Smartt has since been charged and remains in U.S custody. (FILE Photo)
EDITOR’S NOTE: A previous version of this story identified the accused as a former national footballer. Further checks revealed that while the accused shares the same name and age with the former national footballer and is also a relative, the person in custody is the relative and not the former national footballer.
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