CHRISTIANSTED — A corrupt Virgin Islands Port Authority officer who conspired with another man to smuggle 26 pounds of cocaine through Rohlsen Airport on St. Croix got four years in prison.
Charles Rawlins, III, 39, of St. Croix, was ordered to serve 48 months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance and possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance, U.S. Attorney Delia L. Smith said.
Rawlins was given that sentence in U.S. District Court by Judge Wilma A. Lewis who also ordered him to serve three years of supervised release, 100 hours of community service and pay a $2,000.00 fine, and a $200.00 special assessment, . Co-defendant Wayne Jeffers is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Lewis on December 15, 2023.
According to court documents, in the early morning hours of May 11, 2022, Jeffers, 52, a
Virgin Islands Port Authority officer stationed at the Henry E. Rohlsen Airport in St. Croix, placed
a black suitcase containing 12 bricks of cocaine inside a ladder truck that was parked on the ramp of
the airport.
Later that morning, Rawlins, an airport ramp worker, removed the suitcase from the ladder truck and placed it on a baggage cart to be loaded on a Seaborne Silver aircraft destined for San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The luggage containing the cocaine was later seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers.
A drug analyzed conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Southeast Laboratory in Miami, Florida, confirmed that the seized substance was cocaine with a net weight of 12.01 kilograms.
This case was investigated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) investigated this case. It was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Huston.