Two travellers have been sentenced to eight days in jail and fined $10,000 each after pleading guilty to smuggling jewelry through Vancouver International Airport.
Michael David Chan and Bo Kwok Siu pleaded guilty in Richmond Provincial Court Dec. 16 to smuggling jewelry totalling in retail value to more than $1.5 million.
The pair were charged under the Customs Act. Charges were laid by the Canada Border Services Agency’s (CBSA) Criminal Investigations Section (CIS).
According to a CBSA press release, this case began on Nov. 20 when Chan and Sui landed in Vancouver on a flight from Hong Kong. Border services officers received information that a traveller — later identified as Chan — appeared to be concealing goods around his ankles. Officers approached Chan, and referred him for a more in-depth examination. While in secondary examination, officers discovered Chan had concealed six packages of jewelry by strapping them to his legs underneath his pants. The packages contained hundreds of pieces of jewelry with a combined weight of five kilograms. Border services officers arrested Chan for smuggling.
Upon further investigation, officers discovered that Chan was not travelling alone and gathered information to identify the travelling companion who they suspected had smuggled jewelry in the same manner as Chan. They were able to determine that Sui was staying at a nearby hotel. CBSA’s Criminal Investigations attended the hotel, identified the traveller, and placed him under arrest. Sui admitted to hiding jewelry within the hotel room. Under authority of a search warrant, the CIS investigators were granted access to Sui’s hotel room where officers located the jewelry in a garbage bin. An additional five kilograms of jewelry was seized, for a combined weight of ten kilograms.
The jewelry’s total commercial value for duty was $349,696, but the retail appraised value of the jewelry totalled $1,589,530. In addition to the fines in court, Chan and Sui must also pay a civil penalty for the return of the jewelry.
