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Canadian Couple Charged for Importing & Exporting Fentanyl
Karl and Sorina Morrison, Canadian couple from Kitchener, Ontario, have been accused of and charged with importing and exporting Fentanyl across the Canadian border.
A Homeland Security agent noted, in a criminal complaint that was filed with a New York court, that a package mailed from China to Karl Morrison contained four packets. Two of these packets contained types of fentanyl. This complaint also states that, since 2009, five packages were mailed to the couple’s son – these packages were seized by the Canada Border Services Agency once controlled substances were discovered within them.
Agent Curtis Ryan writes in the complaint, “The Morrisons were attempting to smuggle the packages they received from China from the United States to Canada so as to avoid examination by the customs service of either country because the Morrisons knew the contents of the packages to be contraband.”
In this case, Agent Curtis Ryan was alerted by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service about a suspicious package, which originated from a known Chinese fentanyl producer. Kyle Morrison was the addressee on this package – he also maintained a mailbox at a UPS store in Niagara Falls, New York. This package was examined by Curtis Ryan and later testing uncovered that some bags in the package contained types of fentanyl.
Read: What is fentanyl?
Stopped at the Border
Karl and Sorina were under surveillance while they traveled to the UPS store to pick up the packages. Karl proceeded to open the packages, throwing out the packing material with Chinese shipping labels, and put the package contents back into new envelopes. Sorina went back into to the UPS store to mail the envelopes to Canada. She claimed that the envelopes contained “all natural cinnamon.”
As Karl and Sorina were returning to Canada, they were detained by U.S. border security. The envelopes were seized as evidence – they were addressed to two locations within Kitchener, one of which being Karl and Sorina’s home address. At the border, Karl stated that his son had just recently learned of the UPS mailbox and requested to have packages from China and Japan to be shipped there. On October 15, 2016, Kyle picked up three packages for his son, originating in China.
According to the complaint, Karl “did not understand everything his son was telling him… but the names of the things he was sending started with ‘F’ and ‘U’.” Additionally, the packages were claimed to have been be mailed to the couple’s son because they did not want to carry them back across the border. A random address was used as the return address because Karl did not want the packages tracked back to his UPS mailbox.
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