CHARLOTTE AMALIE — A man who had 32 vacuum-sealed bags of marijuana in his luggage at the St. Thomas airport admitted in federal court that he was a drug dealer, authorities said.
Sheldon Stuart “Shellz” Isles, 38, of St. Thomas, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ruth Miller in District Court on Friday and entered a guilty plea to one count charging him with possession with intent to distribute less than 50 kilograms of marijuana, U.S. Attorney Gretchen C.F. Shappert said.
According to the plea bargain agreement with the government, Isles arrived at the Cyril E. King airport on April 10 from Miami. He retrieved his bags from baggage claim and was selected for a secondary inspection.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers searched two of the bags that Isles had with luggage tags showing the last name, “Isles.” Inside the two bags, officers recovered 32 vacuum sealed plastic bags containing approximately 15 kilograms of marijuana.
Isles was one of two men traveling on the same commercial aircraft carrying 40 pounds of marijuana. He was charged separately from the other man with possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute.
It is unclear from publicly available court records whether the two men were part of a criminal conspiracy, or just happened to be traveling on the same flight with the same amount of marijuana, packed similarly, by coincidence.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney Office declined to comment today on the matter to the Virgin Islands Free Press.
“I’m sorry, I am not in a position to comment on that,” Steven J. Calabro, the public information officer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in St. Thomas, said this morning.
A sentencing hearing for Isles will be scheduled at a later date.
This case was investigated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).