FORMER national football Captain Jermaine Smartt, 40, was recently busted at the John F Kennedy (JFK) Airport with a quantity of cocaine in his possession, and is in custody at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center.
According to a Capitol News report, Smartt was busted with 37 cocaine pellets in his possession at the JFK hotel. Capitol News reported that “as part of [an] ongoing investigation, special agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) swooped down on the JFK Inn located near the JFK International Airport. Upon arrival, agents went to an identified room and Jermaine Smartt opened the door.”

The news report online at capitolnewsgy.com also stated that special agent with the DEA, Alexander Sosin, in a sworn court document, stated, that Smartt invited officers into the room, and a search was subsequently conducted, unveiling some of the pellets in a suitcase inside the hotel room. Some of the 37 pellets were discovered after agents opened the suitcase. Tests conducted confirmed that the substance enveloped in the pellets was cocaine.

Reports indicate that Smartt had already cleared immigration and customs at the airport but was under the watchful eye of investigators. Smartt was arrested and taken to JFK medical facility, the Capitol News report said, and was detained until he had passed all the additional pellets “which were contained within his intestinal tract.”
Capitol News said Smartt admitted to U.S. investigators that on April 5, 2017, he had swallowed all the pellets they discovered inside the suitcase before he left Guyana. Smartt migrated to the U.S. from Guyana several years ago and had recently returned after a long while for a holiday.

Quite a few national footballers have over the years been arrested as mules at JFK with cocaine-packed pellets contained in their intestines. On June 11, 2015, Guyanese Footballer Manasseh “Ziggy” Primo, a striker in the Alpha United Football Club, was busted there with 51 pellets of cocaine amounting to 740 grams in his body. The Guyana Chronicle understands that Primo has recently returned to Guyana.

On May 24, 2014, weightlifter Colin `Mr Clean’ Chesney was busted in the USA with over 50 cocaine-filled pellets in his stomach after he arrived in the U.S. on a Caribbean Airlines flight from Guyana. Some years before national football goalkeeper Marlon Hendricks was busted in Barbados, and died after cocaine-filled pellets burst in his stomach.