Judge Geoffrey Crawford March 17 sentenced Georges Yaghmour, 40, of Quebec, to a 63-month period of incarceration upon Yaghmour’s conviction by guilty plea of conspiring to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute more than 500 grams of cocaine.  

According to court records, in late 2019 Yaghmour travelled from Canada to a Burlington, Vermont, hotel where he and others met with an undercover DEA agent posing as a drug courier offering to bring cocaine from South America to Canada, through Vermont.  Court records state that during this meeting Yaghmour stated that he and his partners were prepared to pay one million dollars in exchange for the delivery of 500 kilograms of cocaine.  Eventually, other members of the conspiracy delivered more than $570,000 in partial payment for the DEA’s undercover delivery services, and DEA seized more than 300 kilograms of cocaine after it was delivered in South America for transport to Vermont.  

An April 6, 2021 court filing contains the following photo of some of the cocaine that had been seized as part of this investigation:

On two occasions DEA arrested persons dispatched to pick up some of the cocaine on behalf of the Canadian purchasers, once in Vermont and once in Massachusetts.  Court records show that after one courier failed to deliver the cocaine he was expected to retrieve, other members of the conspiracy kidnapped the courier’s grandparents and held them for ransom that included the quantity of cocaine they were expecting.  

United States Attorney Nikolas P. Kerest commended the outstanding work of the agents and analysts supporting this investigation from the United States Border Patrol, and the Vermont and South American offices of the Drug Enforcement Administration, as well as the office of Homeland Security Investigations in Rouses Point, New York.  

This investigation was part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) investigation. OCDETF seeks to identify, disrupt, and dismantle the highest-level drug traffickers, money launderers, gangs, and transnational criminal organizations that threaten the United States by using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach that leverages the strengths of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies against criminal networks.