It took a while to set up. The drugs would be transported down from the Akwesasne Indian Reservation that straddles boundaries on both the intersection of international (United States and Canada) borders and provincial (Ontario and Quebec) boundaries on both banks of the St. Lawrence River. Two people would be hired as “drug mules”. They would be recruited from the unemployed and given $100 per pound to transport 59 pounds of marijuana and 1000 MDMA/Ecstasy pills to a pre-selected location in Wayne County, where the transfer would take place. The reservation is a big importation traffic site for contraband on the northern border, according to Macedon Police Chief/WayneNet Co-Commander, John Colella. Federal focus in the past years has been to interrupt the flow from the north. “We had a similar case to the one we did in 2007 with over one million a month coming down…,” said Colella.
The “mules” selected have no prior police records. They really have no idea who, or how the drug trafficking affects anyone, or anything outside their own financial gain. If the mules get picked off, it is hard to tie the drug transaction back to the dealer. Arrests are seen as the cost of doing business. If the two mules had been successful, the money handed over for the drugs would have been headed back towards the reservation.
Monday (5/5), WayneNet, the County-wide, multi-police drug enforcement team, assisted by the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), sprung the trap at a local mini-storage facility. After almost two years of work, the two drug mules were taken into custody. Teresa Herne, age 47, of Quebec, Canada and Dean Frary, age 41, of Hogansburg, New York were both charged with Class C Felony Criminal Possession of Marijuana in the 1st Degree, with other charges pending. Both were arraigned in Macedon Court and remanded to the Wayne County jail on $75,000 cash/$150,000 bond.
The drugs seized had a reported street value of $250,000 for the marijuana and $20,000 for the pills.