The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday sentenced a man to 15 years in prison for his role in a scheme to smuggle more than 1.2 tonnes of methamphetamine and ketamine into Taiwan on a rented cargo ship.
Lee Hsin (李鑫) and several others planned and recruited accomplices to smuggle the drugs into Taiwan from overseas in 2023, the verdict showed.
Lee Hsin advised the main suspect in the plot, Lee Chien-liang (李建良), to use an agency to set up an overseas shell company and lease the cargo ship Fei Yan to evade detection, it said.
Photo: Taipei Times
Lee Hsin was the main financier of the operation, while a man surnamed Cheng (鄭) organized the shipping logistics, and another man surnamed Yeh (葉) handled land transportation and storage, it said.
Additionally, a hired captain and crew, who were not part of the criminal operation, accompanied the drugs aboard the cargo ship, prosecutors said.
The Fei Yan on July 16, 2023, departed Kaohsiung and sailed into waters near Hong Kong, where its automatic identification system was turned off and its name changed, they said.
The ship on July 29 met with another vessel off the coast of Vietnam, where 60 green burlap bags of methamphetamine and five bags of ketamine were taken on board, they said.
The Fei Yan arrived back at the Port of Kaohsiung on Aug. 7, where police intercepted the drug shipment as the suspects were preparing to load it into a truck, prosecutors said.
Soon after police uncovered and seized more than 1.2 tonnes methamphetamine and a smaller quantity of ketamine, Lee Chien-liang, Yeh and others were taken into custody, court documents showed.
While Lee Hsin was not among those initially arrested, after Lee Chien-liang was sentenced to life in prison, he agreed to testify against his coconspirators, which reduced his sentence to 17 years.
During his trial, Lee Hsin said he had not known about the smuggling plot, and had only offered to help the group establish a company, court documents showed.
He also accused his accomplices of colluding against him to receive lighter sentences.
However, his messages on Line showed he had been deeply involved in the plot, prosecutors said.
The court sentenced Lee Hsin to 15 years in prison for drug trafficking, citing his role in planning the crime, his continued denials of guilt, and the public safety risk posed by such a large quantity of drugs.
The verdict can be appealed.
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