GEORGETOWN: A Guyanese man smuggled 268 kilograms (590 pounds) of cocaine into Brooklyn in parcels of frozen shrimp and seafood, according to Brooklyn federal court papers.
Customs inspectors rummaged through a shipping container at the Red Hook Terminal after a drug-detection dog sniffed out some potential contraband on June 10, according to a criminal complaint.
The shipping container — marked “Seaboard Marine” and addressed to “Randolph Fraser” — was stuffed with frozen shrimp and fish packages along with a sizable haul of hidden cocaine.
The individual frozen food packages were labeled with a telephone number of the original sender that was eventually traced to a man named Heerelall Sukdeo, court papers state.
Setting a trap to catch him, Sukdeo was notified that the parcel had cleared customs and was ready to be retrieved from the Brooklyn facility. Agents removed the cocaine and replaced it with other items to maintain the shipment’s original appearance.
A week later, an unnamed man arrived to pick up the package and was observed driving around to different locations across New York City before delivering the package to a storage facility in Brooklyn Tuesday morning.
Sukdeo arrived at the scene and was seen supervised the unloading of the shipment from the truck, court papers state.
Sukdeo denied any knowledge of the cocaine’s origins after being confronted by agents at the scene, according to court papers. But an employee at the warehouse told agents that he knew Sukdeo as “Randolph Fraser” and that he rented space at the facility under that name.
Sukdeo was arraigned in Brooklyn federal court Wednesday and is being held pending a bail application.
