NEW YORK: A 52-year-old Vancouver man who smuggled ecstasy and cocaine across the Canada-U. S. border for years was handed a seven-year sentence in a Seattle courtroom Tuesday.
Philip Cote will also be on supervised release for four years after he serves his sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik said.
Cote pleaded guilty in February to conspiracy to distribute both ecstasy and cocaine.
U.S. officials said he crossed the border 86 times with an associate from 2006 until his arrest last August to smuggle ecstasy south and cocaine north.
Lasnik noted that Cote had “seen people’s lives ruined by drugs,” yet continued to transport cocaine and ecstasy for financial gain.
A 52-year-old Vancouver man who smuggled ecstasy and cocaine across the Canada-U. S. border for years was handed a seven-year sentence in a Seattle courtroom Tuesday.
Philip Cote will also be on supervised release for four years after he serves his sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik said.
Cote pleaded guilty in February to conspiracy to distribute both ecstasy and cocaine.
U.S. officials said he crossed the border 86 times with an associate from 2006 until his arrest last August to smuggle ecstasy south and cocaine north.
Lasnik noted that Cote had “seen people’s lives ruined by drugs,” yet continued to transport cocaine and ecstasy for financial gain.
Documents filed in the case say that Cote and a co-conspirator made frequent drug runs across the border with one person acting as a lookout in one vehicle and the other carrying drugs in a secret compartment in a second vehicle.
Last July 25, he travelled from B.C. to Blaine, where he supplied his contact with 20 kilograms of ecstasy that had been hidden in the trunk of a car. Cote believed his contact was headed to California to deliver the drugs and he instructed the person to pick up a 32-kilogram load of cocaine and hide it in the walls of an SUV for transport to Canada.
What Cote didn’t know was that his contact was working with agents from U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations.
