A man who was caught with the equivalent of 195 tins of chewing tobacco hidden in a speaker box while attempting to drive across the Osoyoos border has avoided jail time.
Twenty-two-year-old Jaden Adrian Forrest Peterson, a dual American-Canadian citizen with Indigenous status in Canada, declared the equivalent of seven tobacco tins to customs at the border while travelling into Osoyoos on Jan. 8, 2019. But a secondary inspection found much more.
"He admitted to purchasing the tobacco which he would sell to friends and coworkers," said Crown counsel in court Wednesday (Aug. 21).
The smuggled amount would have cost him $1,122.50 had he declared it. Instead, a joint submission from the Crown and defence led the judge to hand him a $2,000 fine for lying about what he was bringing into the country, and $2,316.60 for intending to sell the unstamped imported goods.
This was Peterson's first offence, and court heard he is employed in Logan Lake in the mining industry.
"I just want to take responsibility for my actions," he said.
Judge Jane Cartwright gave Peterson an idea of the severity of his crime by listing the maximum sentences she could choose to impose — six months jail time and up to $50,000 for the first charge, and 18 months and up to $500,000 for the second.
"That's the kind of thing face when you fool around with this," she said. "This was a very stupid thing to do."
She decided to accept the joint submission for the minimum fines and no jail time, given his lack of a record and his prompt guilty plea. Peterson will have until the end of 2020 to pay the fines.
— Chelsea Powrie, Castanet
