Drug kingpin Khaophone Sychantha, who was on the U.S. Most Wanted list, got a break from a Canadian judge on a massive ecstasy smuggling scheme.
That wasn’t the case in Detroit.
Sychantha, 43, of Lakeshore, Ont., was convicted by a U.S. federal jury for masterminding a massive drug smuggling ring that transported hundreds of thousands of pills across the Canadian border.
Officials said Sychantha had been running the operation for years.
“Sychantha sought to flood our communities with illicit drugs, bringing violence and pain to both sides of the border,” HSI Detroit Special Agent in Charge Angie Salazar said in a release.
“HSI special agents, prosecutors and law enforcement partners worked diligently for more than a decade to seek justice and accountability for these crimes. This conviction is a testament to their perseverance.”
The dual Laotian-Canadian citizen was arrested near Montreal in 2017 following an assault on a cop and a short chase, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan said in a release.
He was extradited to Detroit on drug trafficking charges in May 2023.
Sychantha was convicted following a six-day trial on one count of conspiring to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine, ecstasy and N-benzylpiperazine (BZP).
In addition, he was convicted of one count of possession of methamphetamine, ecstasy and BZP with intent to distribute and one count of possession of ecstasy and BZP with intent to distribute.
The drug dealer now faces a mandatory 10 years in prison that could result in a maximum sentence of life in prison. He will be held in custody by the U.S. Marshals until his sentencing in February.
His lawyer David Steingold told the Detroit News that Sychantha chose to represent himself during his trial.
The News reported that Sychantha never offered a defence because he believed he would eventually be exonerated, arguing he should never have been extradited to the U.S. from Canada.
It’s not hard to follow Sychantha’s thinking.
In 2019, according to the Windsor Star, he wiggled out of a narcotics export conspiracy case that involved a large quantity of ecstasy pills seized at the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel.
Superior Court Justice John Desotti found Sychantha not guilty because of credibility with the crown’s main witness who received a greatly reduced sentence for cooperating with cops.
Desotti said cops on both sides of the U.S.-Canada also harmed the case. He thought the main witness was telling the truth but still…
“I have to be sure beyond a reasonable doubt — mostly sure or probably sure is not part of this determination of guilt or innocence,” he told the court.
Jurors in Detroit did not appear to agonize as the Canadian judge did.
Meanwhile, a 41-year-old Ontario woman was sentenced to 11 years in a Nigerian prison after she convicted of smuggling 74 parcels of a high-octane strain of synthetic cannabis called Canadian Loud, into the African country.
Adrienne Munju was arrested earlier this month at Terminal 1 of Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos as she disembarked from a KLM flight.
She pleaded guilty to two counts of drug smuggling.
Munju claimed she was recruited through an online platform to traffic the dope for a payment of $10,000 upon delivery in Lagos. She needed the money to fund her master’s degree, she told cops.
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