A man who once had a place on the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation’s ten-most-wanted-fugitives list next to al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden testified in Magistrates’ Court last week against Violet “Letty” Hodge, who is accused of being involved in an international cocaine trafficking organisation.

Housed in a federal prison in Herlong, California, James Springette told the court last Thursday via video-link that Ms. Hodge travelled with her husband, Earl “Bob” Hodge, to meet him in Venezuela in late 2001 or early 2002 to set up an operation that would ship thousands of kilograms of cocaine through the Virgin Islands en route to the US.

At his fortified compound on the Venezuelan Isla de Margarita, Mr. Springette claimed, Ms. Hodge served as a translator between him, a close associate, and Mr. Hodge, helping negotiate fees, percentages, and code words for the shipment and storage of the drug.

During the Hodges’ alleged stay on Isla de Margarita, Mr. Springette said, he took them shopping at Gucci, where he bought them loafers and other fashion items.

The ‘eyes and ears’

Mr. Springette’s cousin, Elton Turnbull, also testified during the trial over video-link from a US penitentiary.

Mr. Turnbull called himself Mr. Springette’s “eyes and ears,” explaining that he often served as the link of communication between his cousin and the Hodges since Mr. Springette was a fugitive from the law.

Typically, he claimed, he would communicate directly with Mr. Hodge, who is not currently facing charges and has denied involvement in the operation. But sometimes, Mr. Turnbull added, he would send messages to Mr. Hodge through his wife.

A third convicted cocaine trafficker, Eduardo Diaz, also testified from US prison on Friday before the trial was adjourned to April.

Mr. Diaz said he was an employee of Roberto Mendez-Hurtado, one of the alleged leaders of the now defunct Colombian El Norte del Valle drug cartel.

“[Mr. Mendez-Hurtado] sent me to Tortola because the money he was receiving from Tortola was short,” he said.

The witness claimed to have counted millions of dollars in the Hodges’ Hannahs Estate home, and served as a witness when cocaine was airdropped into VI waters for Mr. Hodge to pick up — “because Bob didn’t want to receive airdrops without a witness.”

He also said Mr. Mendez-Hurtado and his wife visited the Hodges in Tortola, where he served as a translator when Mr. Hodge tried to convince the drug lord to invest $20 million into a shopping mall here. Ms. Hodge also served as a translator during those discussions, he said.

Former Royal Virgin Islands Police Force Inspector Mark Hughes, who helped carry out the investigation into the alleged drug ring, gave a lengthy account of the operation that led to a major cocaine seizure in 2010.

Mr. Hughes said he was sent to the US in 2009 to interview Messrs. Springette and Turnbull.

In July 2010, the detective recounted, he received information that Mr. Mendez-Hurtado was staying at a home in the Great Mountain area.

When a search warrant was executed, he said, Mr. Mendez-Hurtado wasn’t found, but two other people were: Mr. Diaz and Denisse del Sosa Ventura, who allegedly was Mr. Mendez-Hurtado’s accountant. Mr. Hughes said both were arrested, charged with uttering a forged document, and eventually sentenced to prison.

Details of the arrests were sketchy when they happened.

According to Beacon archives, then-Senior Magistrate Valerie Stephens closed the court hearings for “security reasons.” Police released the name of the arrested as Ms. del Sosa Ventura and “Osman Alberto Vargas Sanchez” — the name Mr. Diaz fraudulently claimed, according to Mr. Hughes.

Airdrop bust

About two months later, in September 2010, police intercepted an airdrop of several hundred kilograms of cocaine six miles north of Guana Island.

Two boats were in the vicinity of the drop, the detective testified. One of them — with Carlston Beazer, Chad Skelton and Juan Figueroa-Valdez on board — was caught, but no drugs were found aboard, and the other escaped and was seen heading toward Norman Island, according to Mr. Hughes.

The next day, police conducted a search on the island and found eight large bales of cocaine totalling about 260 kilograms, he said, adding that Messrs. Beazer, Skelton and Figueroa-Valdez were charged in connection with the discovery. (The charges have since been dropped, and the three have denied involvement in the drug operation.)

In the spring of 2011, Mr. Diaz and Ms. del Sosa Ventura agreed to cooperate with the police, and they were placed in the RVIPF witness protection programme, Mr. Hughes continued.

In August 2011, he said, he received intelligence about “suspicious activity” at the Terrance B. Lettsome International Airport.

That intelligence later led to the arrest and prosecution of customs officer Linda Todman-Huggins, who pleaded guilty to taking a $2,000 bribe in exchange for helping to get suitcases of money loaded onto a Venezuelan plane bound for South America, according to Beacon archives.

Later that August, an operation was carried out that led to the arrests of the Hodges, Mr. Hughes said.

Cross-examination

Defence attorneys Julian Knowles, QC, and Patrick Thompson didn’t have much to ask Mr. Hughes during their opportunity for cross-examination.

Mr. Knowles did, however, question Messrs. Springette, Turnbull and Diaz’s alleged relationship with Ms. Hodge.

While all three claimed that the defendant served as a translator for Mr. Hodge, Mr. Knowles said his client didn’t know any of them. To support the claim, Mr. Knowles pointed out that the witnesses’ sworn statements to the police did not mention Ms. Hodge by her last name or did not mention her at all.

Mr. Springette’s affidavit, for example, referred to someone named “Leticia Hodge,” while his testimony in court only referred to a “Violet” or “Letty” Hodge, he said. Mr. Springette replied that “Leticia” is Spanish for “Letty.”

Messrs. Turnbull and Diaz’s affidavits didn’t mention Ms. Hodge at all, Mr. Knowles said.

Mr. Turnbull responded that he was never asked about the defendant when giving his sworn statement in 2009, and Mr. Diaz said he might have forgotten to mention her.

“If what you said today is true, you wouldn’t have forgotten it back then,” Mr. Knowles told Mr. Diaz.

Lucien Smith

Also on trial with Ms. Hodge is Lucien Smith, who allegedly owned the boats used in the September 2010 airdrop.

Not much testimony involving Mr. Smith was given in court last week, however.

Cecil Leonard testified that Mr. Smith was his boat mechanic, and that he saw the boat Good to Go — the vessel allegedly used by Messrs. Beazer, Skelton and Figueroa-Valdez during the September 2010 airdrop — parked in Mr. Smith’s boatyard.

Two St. Thomas fishermen — Christopher Barry and his father David Barry — testified that they spotted a 35-foot speedboat half sunk near Hull Bay, St. Thomas on the morning of Sept. 29, 2010. They hauled the damaged vessel ashore, where it was eventually taken by the US Coast Guard.

Though the testimony didn’t explicitly link the sunken boat to Mr. Smith, Senior Crown Counsel Valston Graham said at a December 2010 hearing that the boat was the second one seen at the sight of the drug drop. A forensic technique known as an ion scan performed on the vessel revealed what appeared to be traces of cocaine, he said at the time.

Mr. Diaz also mentioned Mr. Smith, saying that he never met him but that he had heard of him.

The trial of Ms. Hodge and Mr. Smith is scheduled to continue in April.

Related case

Meanwhile, Messrs. Hodge, Skelton, Beazer, Figueroa-Valdez, and Roberto “Tico” Harrigan — a former customs canine handler who formerly was accused of accepting $45,000 in bribes and helping smuggle roughly $4 million onboard planes bound for Venezuela — are free from prison after High Court Justice Vicki-Ann Ellis in December quashed an order by former Governor Boyd McCleary to extradite them to the US.

However, how long those men will remain free remains up in the air, as the government still has avenues to pursue prosecution.

First, the Attorney General’s Chambers has until Monday to appeal Ms. Ellis’ decision.

Second, Director of Public Prosecutions Wayne Rajbansie has the option of reinstating local charges against the men, according to Mr. Thompson. Those charges were discontinued on Oct. 12, 2012, the day after Mr. McCleary made a second order to proceed with an extradition hearing for the men.

Finally, a new order to proceed with an extradition hearing can be made by Governor John Duncan. While Ms. Ellis struck down Mr. McCleary’s order because he failed to “genuinely exercise his own deliberate discretion,” she remitted the matter to the new governor for reconsideration in accordance with her judgment.

The Office of the DPP, the AG’s Chambers, and the Governor’s Office have remained mum as to whether action will be taken against the men.

 

 

The Springette story

Last week’s testimony of convicted drug lord James Springette in the Violet “Letty” Hodge trial was just the latest chapter in a saga that he said started in the United States Virgin Islands three decades ago.

Mr. Springette’s career as a cocaine dealer began in 1985 on St. Thomas, when a man approached him about getting into the drug business, he testified last Thursday in Magistrates’ Court.

As a result, he bought an ounce of cocaine, he said. He later increased his purchases to quarter kilograms and then full kilograms.

Soon after, Mr. Springette met a Colombian — who he referred to as “John” — in St. Maarten, and the two set up an operation to ship cocaine from South America through the USVI and into the US mainland, he said.

“I would take care of all the arrangements in the Virgin Islands,” he said, explaining how he became the leader of the organisation that would become known as the “Island Boys.”

Throughout the early 1990s, Mr. Springette and the Island Boys shipped thousands of kilograms of cocaine through the USVI to Augusta, Georgia, according to a documentary on the gang called The FBI Files: Final Takedown.

That system changed when the US Drug Enforcement Agency made a major bust in February 1996, putting the Islands Boys on alert that it was no longer safe to operate freely in the USVI, according to the documentary.

“Springette made the executive decision that they wouldn’t bring in cocaine directly through the US Virgin Islands,” DEA agent Chris Howell said in the film.

This territory

Mr. Springette subsequently moved the Island Boys east into this territory, which would feel the violent repercussions of the “executive decision” months later. In June 1996, a police operation against the gang turned into what the Beacon described as a “gun battle between police and alleged drug smugglers” near the Delta gas station in Pasea Estate.

The FBI Files documentary stated that the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force had been monitoring the gang members and learned that they were planning to move 1,269 kilograms of cocaine through Tortola. Police moved to intercept the load at around 4 a.m. on June 19, but they were badly outgunned: Officers were armed with pistols and shotguns against the smugglers’ AR-15 assault rifles and night-vision goggles.

“The first shot sounded like an electrical transformer exploding,” said a Pasea Estate resident describing the shootings at the time. “It was loud. I turned off all my circuit breakers because I thought there would be a fire.”

The smugglers shot their way through police — shooting then-RVIPF Inspector Jacob George in the eye in the process — and escaped that night. But one of them, Melvin Reuben Petersen, was caught on Tortola later that morning, and several others were caught by US authorities when they attempted to flee to Coki Point in the USVI.

Also that morning, Tortola police also found the smugglers’ van about a mile away from the shootout, broken down with a hole in the radiator and 1,269 kilograms of cocaine in the back.

However, Mr. Springette, who the documentary claimed took part in the shootout, made it back to Colombia.

On Tortola, Dr. Hubert O’Neal treated Mr. George before he went to Puerto Rico for emergency treatment.

“He was very lucky [the bullet] did not enter his cranium,” Dr. O’Neal said of the officer, who lost vision in his right eye. “It was very close.”

On edge

Beacon reports paint a picture of the territory being on edge after the incident. The Central Administration Building was evacuated two days later when officials received an anonymous bomb threat, which then-Police Commissioner Vernon Malone said was likely associated with the drug bust.

After that, police were in high security mode, stationing members of their Tactical Unit outside the Legislative Council and High Court building, as well as the chief minister’s residence and the Magistrates’ Court.

Mr. Springette was on the lam for three years until being arrested in Colombia. When he was jailed, he reached out to Earl “Bob” Hodge through his cousin, Elton Turnbull, and asked him about running the VI cell, according to his testimony.

“I wanted to continue trafficking because [my former partners] all left the area, and Mr. Hodge had boats and knew the area,” he said via video-link last week in Magistrates’ Court as Mr. Hodge, who is not currently facing any charges and has denied involvement in the drug ring, looked on.

Mr. Springette said he arranged for his confidants, Mr. Turnbull and Francis Moulan, to pick up a shipment with Mr. Hodge, adding that the operation was a success.

“I was pleased with [Mr. Hodge’s] work, so I knew I was comfortable enough to do business with him in the future,” he said.

However, he added, the alleged business was in jeopardy because Mr. Springette was sitting in a Colombian jail cell, awaiting extradition to the US.

But before he could be extradited, he escaped the maximum-security prison by sewing himself into a mattress and being smuggled through five checkpoints, according to the FBI Files.

With the help of a notorious Colombian paramilitary group, AUC, Mr. Springette said, he escaped into Venezuela. After that, he was put on the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s list of ten most wanted fugitives, but he continued his trafficking operation until his arrest in 2002.

During that time, Mr. Springette said, he used Mr. Turnbull as a means of communicating with Mr. Hodge and others with whom he did business.

Mr. Turnbull testified on Friday that he did “10 to 15” jobs with Mr. Hodge, helping him retrieve airdrops of 10 to 13 30-kilogram bales of cocaine each time.

Money laundering

Besides helping with the airdrops, he claimed, he also helped with laundering the monetary profits.

To that end, he described a system he called the “lottery ticket scheme,” which involved buying winning lottery tickets from people at 90 to 95 percent of their face value.

Normally, lottery winners have to pay about 35 percent in taxes, he explained. Therefore, the lottery winner would benefit by avoiding taxes, and drug smugglers would benefit by obtaining legitimate means of income.

“Mr. Hodge did this,” he testified.

Messrs. Springette and Turnbull were arrested in 2002, the former by Venezuelan agents.

Mr. Springette was sentenced to 35 years imprisonment. However, he made a deal with US officials to testify against other suspected drug dealers, which reduced his sentence to 20 years.

Mr. Turnbull testified that he made a similar deal, getting his sentenced reduced from 29 years imprisonment to 11 years in exchange for his testimony.

Mr. Springette said last Thursday that he has served as a witness in three trials, including the ongoing one involving Ms. Hodge and Lucien Smith.

If prosecution is pursued against Mr. Hodge, then Messrs. Springette and Turnbull will likely testify against him, too.