Man slapped with 9-month jail time for trafficking ecstasy

…airport smuggler fined $75,000

Caught with 34 grams of ecstasy, Joshua Mentore has been sentenced to serve nine months’ imprisonment and fined $153,000.
This sentence was handed down on the 23-year-old resident of Pattensen, Greater Georgetown by acting Chief Magistrate Sherdel Isaacs-Marcus on Thursday.
Mentore had initially pleaded guilty to the charge when he appeared in court last month, and in order to hear probation and other social impact reports, Magistrate Isaacs-Marcus had deferred his sentencing to Thursday.
According to reports, on December 20, 2023, Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) ranks conducted an operation on Dennis Street in ‘C’ Field Sophia, Greater Georgetown, during which they intercepted and searched a man, later identified as Mentore.
They found on his person a quantity of pills suspected to be ecstasy. As such, the man was arrested and taken to CANU Headquarters, where the pills, numbering 80, tested positive for ecstasy with an approximate weight of 34 grams.

Drug trafficking
David McDonald, a 23-year-old who was an outgoing passenger at the Eugene F. Correira International Airport at Ogle, East Coast Demerara on Thursday when he was nabbed with 58 grams of cannabis, appeared on Friday before Sparendaam Magistrate Rushelle Liverpool and pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of narcotics for the purpose of trafficking.
He has been fined $75,000, in default of which he would have to serve six months’ imprisonment.
At the Ogle Airport on January 17, CANU officers conducted a search on the person of McDonald, a passenger destined for Aurora in Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni), and unearthed a transparent parcel containing a quantity of leaves, seeds and stems suspected to be cannabis. As a result, McDonald, a labourer of Lot 23 Old Kara Kara in Mackenzie Linden, Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice), was arrested and escorted to the CANU Headquarters, where the narcotic was weighed and amounted to 84 grams. (G1)