ATLANTA — The final person in a drug scheme to smuggle millions of dollars of cocaine into the U.S. masked as butter has been sentenced, the Department of Justice Northern District of Georgia office announced Wednesday.
The man who was sentenced had been part of the plan to smuggle the tubs of butter from Haiti to distribute the drugs in areas such as Atlanta, according to prosecutors. The 52-year-old Miami man was sentenced to 10 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release.
A jury convicted him on drug distribution charges in August. According to U.S. Attorney Ryan Buchanan, he was connected to the drug ring in August 2017 when U.S. Customs and Border Patrol searched a shipment bound for Atlanta. The shipment, coming from Haiti, had 28 packages of butter. The packages were holding white powder substances and later tested positive for cocaine and weighed around 28 kg, prosecutors said.
Homeland Security Investigations special agents in Atlanta made a "controlled delivery" to the shipment's intended destination: a business in Austell, Georgia. Another defendant in the case arrived to pick it up, according to attorneys.
Authorities learned the source of supply was coming from another man who was also a player in the drug ring, prosecutors said. He had shipped at least four previous loads of "butter" from Haiti to the other defendant, who then distributed them. The man sentenced Wednesday was one of the defendant's buyers, authorities said.
In total, prosecutors said more than 100 kg of cocaine had been shipped from Haiti to the U.S., amounting to more than $3 million, according to attorneys.
The man from Haiti was previously sentenced to six years and eight months. The 48-year-old was also sentenced to five years of supervised release. The other defendant, a 47-year-old from Douglasville, Georgia, faces a similar sentence.