Records expose details of how marijuana ring worked

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FruityBud

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Written statements to police given by the three women include details of a covert nighttime hovercraft ride into the U.S. across the St. Lawrence Seaway, where a marijuana-laden car and cell phone were waiting.

Court records show the three women told police they were to be paid $5,000 to drive marijuana from Massena to New York City, and an extra $2,000 if they agreed to transport money back upstate.

The trip to the Big Apple was interrupted when the vehicle one woman was driving broke down near Exit 23 of the Northway, causing her to pull off until the man she knew only as "Gates," with whom she’d been in constant cell phone contact during their trip, sent to her aid two other women in a different car, according to court records.

As they transferred bags of marijuana from one car to the other on a remote road off Route 9, a passing Warren County sheriff’s officer saw them, stopped to see if they needed help and discovered the drugs.

The accounts of how the women wound up on Feb. 24 at the wrong end of Warren County’s largest marijuana seizure show they were couriers in a drug ring that Warren County Assistant District Attorney Kevin Donlon told a judge moved millions of dollars of marijuana a month. Federal prosecutors are looking into the ring, he told Warren County Judge John Hall.

Kayla A.C. Snyder, 22, of Cornwall, Ontario, was driving the car that broke down. She told sheriff’s officers that she was first directed to a river in Ontario, where a man on a hovercraft met her and took her across the St. Lawrence River to Massena.

She was then taken to a car where a cell phone awaited on a seat, and "Gates" directed her to drive to Plattsburgh and await further instructions.

"He told me to wait so he could make sure there weren’t any checkpoints," she told police.

The U.S. Border Patrol has set up checkpoints in recent years at various spots on the Northway.

Snyder eventually got instructions to head south on the Northway, but the car broke down and she got off at the Warrensburg exit.

She said she wanted to abandon the trip, but the man on the other end of the line "told me I was not messing around with small time (stuff)" so she waited as she was told.

At the same time, court records show, Kendra Theoret, 22, and Cassey M. O’Byrne, 28, both of Cornwall, Ontario, were making a separate marijuana delivery to the Syracuse area, but were called on a cell phone and told to change their plans and head east.

O’Byrne told police she had been making marijuana deliveries after a friend approached her at a bar in Canada and offered her money. She said she was "afraid of him because of the business he’s in. It’s some serious stuff."

All three women pleaded not guilty to the charges Wednesday in Warren County Court, with Judge John Hall setting bail at $100,000 cash or $200,000 bail bond. Each faces felony counts of first-degree criminal possession of marijuana and fourth-degree conspiracy.

Their lawyers downplayed their roles in what Donlon called an "international drug ring."

Garfield Raymond, who represents Theoret, said his client was simply a "mule," while Marc Zuckerman, who represents O’Byrne, said his client also was nothing more than a courier who hails from an economically depressed area.

Snyder is represented by lawyer Stanley Cohen of Massena, who said he has "dealt with many cases that are very similar to this" and downplayed the case, saying marijuana is not a "hard drug."

Federal authorities believe tons of marijuana move across the U.S.-Canada border through the Akwesasne Indian Reservation, which straddles the international boundary.

Three Canadian women have been indicted on charges they possessed 125 pounds of marijuana, and recently filed court records paint a fascinating picture of how a multimillion-dollar, international marijuana ring moves its product into the U.S. and on to major markets like New York City.

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