Three years imprisonment, $50,000 fine for American mother  
A WOMAN was sentenced to three years imprisonment and fined $50,000 yesterday, after she pleaded guilty to drug trafficking.
United States (U.S.) citizen Viola Pantaleon admitted, to Magistrate Sueanna Lovell, that she swallowed cocaine pellets, weighing 176 grammes, in an attempt to export them from the Cheddi Jagan International Airport on October 28.
The convict said she has four small children to maintain but was sorry for what she did.
Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) Special Prosecutor Oswald Massiah told the court the prisoner came to Guyana on October 17, under the pretence of vacationing, was collected at the airport and taken to Eccles, East Bank Demerara, where she stayed.
Massiah said, on October 27, she met with the same person who took her from the airport and was given 100 cocaine pellets to swallow.
The prosecutor said Pantaleon was left alone to do so but was only able to consume 19 pellets after which she encountered difficulties and hid the remainder in some dirty linen which she disposed of in the garbage.
The prosecution narrative said Pantaleon went to the airport on October 28 and, while she was being searched, a CANU officer observed her acting strangely and, when questioned, confessed to swallowing cocaine pellets.
Massiah said the trafficker was x-rayed at a city hospital, where the strange objects in her stomach were revealed, removed and tested.