A North Vancouver truck driver who worked for the Hells Angels, driving massive shipments of marijuana and cocaine over the Canada-U.S. border, has been sentenced to 12 years in a U.S. jail.
Judge John C. Coughenour of the U.S. District Court of Western Washington sentenced James Postlethwaite, 60, to 144 months in prison plus five years of supervised release for his role in what prosecutors described as a sophisticated drug trafficking conspiracy.
Postlethwaite was sentenced Tuesday after being found guilty by a jury in November of conspiracy to traffic marijuana.
He had been in custody since his arrest at the B.C.-Idaho border in March 2012.
In handing down the sentence, Coughenour said Postlethwaite had been involved in the drug smuggling ring for a significant amount of time and was responsible for smuggling vast quantities of marijuana into the United States as well as smuggling cocaine back to Canada.
Postlethwaite smuggled the drugs across the border in a tractor-trailer that contained a sophisticated hidden compartment that could hold more than 600 pounds of marijuana.
Postlethwaite, a truck driver for 30 years, would also carry a legitimate load like scrap paper or other recyclables placed on top of the hidden compartment, according to court documents.
He would drive through the border, drop off the recyclables, then continue to a warehouse in Kent, Washington, where the marijuana would be unloaded.
Money from the marijuana sales would be used by members of the drug trafficking ring to buy cocaine from a Mexican drug cartel. Postlethwaite would also smuggle cocaine back into Canada.
One person who testified at his trial in co-operation with authorities spoke about seeing workers loading about 60 kilograms of cocaine into the secret compartment of Postlethwaites trailer for the return trip to Canada.
Once in Canada, this cocaine fuelled addiction, violence and death on the streets of Vancouver and other cities, prosecutors said.
Another person who testified during the trial estimated that Postlethwaite had smuggled about 8,200 kilograms of marijuana into the U.S. in one year alone.
Postlethwaite is believed to have made the cross-border drug runs for at least seven years.
Several U.S. agencies including the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force and Department of Homeland Security had been working on the investigation since 2010. A series of wiretaps revealed the location of the Seattle-area warehouse where Postlethwaite would deliver the shipments of B.C. bud.
Postlethwaite, listed as the owner of Strive Trucking on Westover Road, has no criminal history.
Prosecutors in the case recommended the sentence of 144 months the same sentence handed down to two others found guilty in the conspiracy case.
The judge recommended that Postlethwaite be jailed in a medium security prison in Victorville, Calif., at the request of his defence lawyer.
jseyd@nsnews.com
