Saturday, June 4, 2016

UK man gets 15 years in U.S. prison for smuggling North Korean drugs


NEW YORK (Reuters) - A British citizen who worked for a Philippines-based global criminal organization was sentenced on Friday to over 15 years in a U.S. prison for conspiring to import 100 kilograms of North Korean methamphetamine into the United States.

Scott Stammers, 47, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter in Manhattan. He was one of five defendants who pleaded guilty last year in a case stemming from a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation.

His case is one of several prosecutions to flow out of the 2012 arrest in Liberia of Paul Le Roux, the head of a multinational drug and weapons trafficking enterprise who turned into a top government informant.

On Monday, Joseph "Rambo" Hunter, a former U.S. Army sergeant who prosecutors said oversaw contract killings for Le Roux, received a 20-year prison term for conspiring to kill a federal drug agent and an informant.

Prosecutors said Stammers, while living in the Philippines, managed drug and weapons trafficking for an organization led by Zimbabwe-born Le Roux, who participated in the sting that resulted in his arrest.

Prosecutors said in 2012, Le Roux tasked Stammers and British citizen Philip Shackels with storing and protecting a large amount of North Korean-produced methamphetamine obtained from members of a Hong Kong-based organization.

Law enforcement in Thailand and in the Philippines later seized the methamphetamine.

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