NEW YORK - A former Phuket resident involved in an international plot to peddle methamphetamines bought from North Korea pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to import the drugs from Thailand to America.
Scott Stammers, 46, was arrested with four other foreigners in September, 2013, as they prepared to ship the drugs out of Thailand by boat. They were formally extradited in November of that year.
Stammers pleaded guilty to conspiring to import 100 kilogrammes of pure North Korean methamphetamines from Thailand into the United States, US prosecutors said.
He faces 10 years to life in prison when sentenced at a future date by a US judge. Three of the other defendants pleaded guilty earlier this month.
They were Lim Ye Tiong Tan, 53, a Chinese citizen; Filipino Kelly Allan Reyes Peralta, 41, and long-time Phuket resident Alexander Lnu, 43, a Slovak aka Alexander Checov, aka Alexander Semencov. Lun was allegedly "sergeant at arms" of the Outlaw Motorcycle Club (OMC) on the island.
The fifth man accused of involvement in the drug scheme, 32-year-old Philip Shackels, also British, is scheduled to go on trial in New York on Sept 21.
Manhattan US attorney Preet Bharara thanked authorities in Liberia, Romania and Thailand for assisting with the US investigation.
"Stammers' scheme ended not with the North Korean methamphetamine flooding American streets as he had intended, but rather with a guilty plea in a Manhattan federal court," he said in a statement.
Defendants Ye and Peralta belonged to a criminal gang, which claimed to have stockpiled one tonne of North Korean methamphetamines in the Philippines for storage, court documents say.
Lnu was the Thailand contact for the gang, arranging housing, transportation and smuggling methods into and out of Phuket.
The gang was exposed when Lnu made a deal to hire Joseph Manuel "Rambo" Hunter, 48, an American who had served in the US military as a sniper instructor. Hunter and his Filipino girlfriend ran drug operations from a house in Kathu district.
Hunter, who was arrested at the same time as the drug gang, pled guilty last February to charges of conspiring to murder. He was convicted of running a gang of military-trained snipers who were to carry out contract killings for two Colombian drug cartels.
The catch was that the "leaders" of both cartels who met Hunter were informants for the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Below: Joseph "Rambo" Hunter was arrested in Phuket in September, 2013, by a team from the Narcotics Suppression Bureau. (Photo by Apichit Jinakul)
