Snowshoeing Canadians Sentenced in Pot Smuggling Case

I don’t know if there’s anything more Canadian than snowshoeing for more than eight hours, with a machete, across a snowy mountain pass to smuggle 30 pounds of B.C. bud across our porous northern border, but I do know that it will get you 30 months in prison if you’re caught.

The Canucks par excellence hiked all the way from Cultus Lake in Canada, to Glacier, Washington, where they were picked up by Federal agents. Richard Bafaro, a 45-year-old man from Vancouver, B.C., was sentenced today to 30 months in prison and three years probation by U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman following his conviction as mastermind of an operation to smuggle $300,000 worth of marijuana across the border.

According to court documents, on April 26, 2010, border patrol agents found three Canadians hiding in the woods around the Canyon Creek area of the Snoqualmie National Forest after following their snowshoe prints for miles. From there, the conspiracy unraveled quickly; a fourth man was arrested as he drove in on a remote service road to pick up the smugglers. The suspects then led agents to a Best Western in Bellingham, WA, and to a waiting Richard Bafaro.

When asking for the full 30-month sentence, prosecutors noted that Bafaro “organized the venture, recruited participants, lead the participants through the route, and told the other participants that he would pay them thousands of dollars for their efforts.” In a tearful statement at his sentencing, Bafaro apologized for his crime but maintained his innocence in the recruitment of his co-conspirators.

This was not Bafaro’s first misadventure along the U.S.-Canada border. During the course of the Federal investigation, he revealed that he had been forced to pay his Canadian drug suppliers $70,000 after a shipment of marijuana was lost on a previous trip. Bafaro and a friend used a snowmobile to search for the drugs, but abandoned their search after his friend broke a leg. After a number of days in the woods, the friend, near death, had to be airlifted from the Canadian wilderness. Bafaro’s friend was lucky they didn’t make it across the border on this first go-around; think of the medical bills! Thank god for the Canadian health care system.