OFF THE WIRE
By Andy Ivens, The Province July 26, 2010 •Story A Washington state man caught smuggling $2 million worth of ecstasy tablets — which he said came from Hells Angels in Canada — was sentenced to 14 years in a U.S. prison Monday.
Christopher Walters, 41, of Ferndale, Wash., received the load of illegal MDMA, or ecstasy, last July from a co-conspirator who drove a jet ski from B.C. to an isolated cove in the San Juan Islands, according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release.
At Walters’s sentencing hearing, prosecutor Lisca Borichewski introduced evidence of a conversation Walters had with a fellow inmate at a Seattle-area jail in March.
Walters told the man, identified in court documents as “confidential source,” he needed to kill the witnesses against him at his upcoming trial.
“Walters said the product came from Canada and belonged to the HA’s (Hells Angels),” said a court document obtained by The Province.
The confidential source began co-operating with the authorities, who urged him to suggest he knew someone who could kill the witnesses Walters wanted eliminated.
“Walters said that it would be OK, however, and he didn’t need a guy because the Hells Angels knew where one of the witnesses was living,” said the document.
Walters, who has a lengthy criminal record including crimes of violence, drew suspicions from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after he was stopped by U.S. Coast Guard officers in Bellingham Bay in his 19-foot Larsen vessel on July 10, 2009 for a safety inspection.
The Coast Guard found a small amount of marijuana, $1,000 in U.S. bills, numerous cell phones, a global positioning system and a pair of walkie-talkie radios.
On July 17, agents followed Walters and two other co-conspirators to a Ferndale storage facility. A drug dog was called in, and the agents obtained a search warrant for the locker, where they found 100,000 ecstasy pills.
Walters went into hiding, but was arrested Sept. 12 at his girlfriend’s apartment.
“Walters made statements to other co-conspirators that he was being paid $30,000 per load to smuggle drugs for the Hells Angels organized crime group in Canada,” said the press release.
U.S. District Judge James L. Robart took a dim view of Walters’s smuggling activities.
“We need to have sentences that put people on notice in the U.S. and Canada that this conduct will not be tolerated,” he said.
aivens@theprovince.com
Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/Hells+Angels+linked+found+guilty+smuggling+ecstasy+into/3325777/story.html#ixzz0uwgKTCXW
