Man caught near Sarnia with $5M cocaine in secret compartment staring at 9-12 years old

Olanrewaju Ojelade arrived at the Sarnia courthouse Thursday with the realization he could be heading to prison for about a decade for a $5-million cocaine bust at the nearby Blue Water Bridge.

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Superior Court Justice Russell Raikes opted not to sentence him after both lawyers finished their arguments and adjourned the case for about two months.

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But the judge didn’t let Ojelade go home with any false hope.

“You’re clearly going away for a long time,” he said.

Ojelade, then a 29-year-old Brantford resident who also goes by Michael, was arrested on May 24, 2019 at the border connecting the Sarnia area to Michigan after Canada Border Services Agency officers discovered 48, one-kilogram packages of cocaine in a secret steel compartment under the third row of seats in his 2013 Chevrolet Traverse. The drugs, later found to be between 85 and 91 per cent pure, were worth between $2.3 and $5.3 million, depending on how it was sold, a court document says.

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Ojelade, initially charged with drug possession, importing and trafficking, pleaded guilty recently only to importing and the other charges are expected to be dropped after he’s sentenced. But the penalty for that crime alone is between nine and 12 years in prison, both lawyers agreed during Thursday’s hearing.

A Brampton trucker recently was sentenced to 11 years in prison after he was found guilty at trial of trying to bring $3.5 million of cocaine over the same bridge.

Stephane Marinier, a lawyer from the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, argued for 12 years as he believes Ojelade was working with a criminal organization and conspired with them to bring a massive amount of cocaine into Canada.

“He was motivated by greed and greed only,” he said. “His moral blameworthiness is as high as you can get.”

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Investigators probed the search history of Ojelade’s seized phone and computers after his arrest and found they’d been used to look up high-end money counters and large cocaine-related arrests, including of a Toronto man in Indiana in March 2019 with nearly 58 grams of cocaine stashed in a similar hidden compartment. Ojelade and the Toronto man talked on the phone prior to the Indiana arrest, the document says. Ojelade also frequently called and messaged another contact for several weeks leading up to his arrest near Sarnia.

But defense lawyer Scott Cowan, working Thursday as an agent for Ojelade’s lawyer, Christopher Murphy, countered all drug importation cases involve a network of planning and Ojelade was just a middleman.

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“He’s the classic courier middleman,” Cowan said, adding Ojelade never lived an opulent lifestyle.

Marinier also alleged Ojelade successfully pulled this drug border run off at least once before he was caught, but Cowan called it a one-off as there wasn’t enough evidence to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt.

The court heard Ojelade has no prior criminal record and is a religious man who is devoted to his family. But Marinier pointed out his family was involved in the first part of his journey to the US nearly five years ago.

Records show Ojelade, his partner and their children crossed into Port Huron, Mich., in a Buick Enclave on May 15, 2019, and Ojelade’s father followed in the Traverse. They had dinner together in nearby Fort Gratiot, Mich., then Ojelade’s family, including his father, returned to Canada in the Buick while he continued on alone in the Traverse to Hesperia, Calif., a short document says.

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Ojelade arrived back at the Blue Water Bridge shortly after 3 pm on May 24, 2019 and told a Canadian border officer in a booth he was in the US for nine days for a religious function in Utah. He said he bought books and miscellaneous items for $50 and had nothing else to declare.

But he was sent for an investigation and officers, with the help of drug-detecting dogs and large vehicle X-rays, found the hidden compartment and the cocaine.

“It is a massive quantity of cocaine,” Marinier said, adding it was packaged for wholesale.

The way the third row of seats in his SUV was bolted to the secret steel case also posed a dangerous risk to anyone sitting there and Ojelade didn’t plead guilty until a few weeks before a long-awaited trial – 4.5 years after his arrest – was finally expected to start, Marinier said.

Before the hearing was adjourned, Ojelade, a well-spoken man, directly addressed the judge. He apologized for what he did and admitted he knew what he did was wrong.

“I committed a crime and I must be punished,” he said.

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@ObserverTerry

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