Bermuda Real File PhotoA cruise ship passenger who smuggled $240,000 worth of drugs on a Bermuda-bound cruise ship was jailed for just over two years on Wednesday.
But due to time spent on remand, he is eligible for release now that his case has finally been heard in the Supreme Court.
Margil Mireles, 32, was sentenced to 27 months for his role in an illegal plan to smuggle cannabis, liquid THC, and shatter — a glasslike THC oil concentrate — into Bermuda.
Puisne Judge Craig Attridge highlighted that Mireles, from Houston, Texas, said Mireles may already be eligible for release because of the 20 months he had spent on remand.
“This is a very significant quantity of more than one form of a controlled drug, which necessarily aggravates the offence, and the combined total street value of the drugs is $240,550,” he said.
Considering the defendant’s previous good character and the delay in his guilty plea caused by reasonable arguments over jurisdiction in the case, he accepted “that his time in remand has allowed him to mature”.
Moving forward, he told Mireles that the Court trusts that he will think of his wife and children first and consider “the consequences of his actions or acting selfishly, as he acknowledges he did when embarking on this course of action”.
“I hope you have learnt from this and I wish you the best of luck,” he added.
The court heard that security staff on the Celebrity Summit noticed suspicious abnormalities in an X-ray of a piece of luggage that belonged to Mireles, on September 2, 2018.
A subsequent search of his luggage turned up several vials of liquid found inside the lining of a pair of jeans.
A search of his cabin turned up seven bags of plant material, 19 heat-sealed packages of shatter and another 116 vials of THC.
Mireles was arrested Mireles when the ship docked in Bermuda on September 5.
He admitted possessing the drugs, but said he brought them for between $2,000 and $3,000 for his personal use.
Mireles later pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring with others to import the drugs into Bermuda.
Searches of his luggage and cabin turned up a total of 2,185 grams of shatter, 255.04 grams of cannabis and 123 vape pen cartridges containing THC.
The estimated street value of the shatter in Bermuda was said to be $218,500, the cannabis would have sold for $12,750 and the vape cartridges were worth $9,225.
Justice Attridge suggested to the defendant’s lawyer, Auralee Cassidy, that she should make efforts to get her client on a repatriation flight to the US scheduled to leave today.
