Californian gambling addict caught trying to smuggle €300k worth of drugs is jailed

Declan Brennan

A Californian gambling addict caught trying to smuggle nearly €300,000 worth of drugs through Dublin Airport has been jailed for four years.

Jacob Napolitano (28) had arrived in Ireland on an Aer Lingus flight from Los Angeles last May when a customs officer became suspicious of his behaviour.

The officer questioned him and then put his bags through an X-ray machine, which revealed a number of suspicious-looking packages.

Multiple vacuum-packed packages containing cannabis were found with a total weight of just over 17 kilos.

Garda Aine McQuinlan told the court that the estimated street value of the drugs was €288,842.

Napolitano, of Acacia Lane, Lunga Hill, California, came forward on signed pleas from the District Court and confirmed his guilty plea to the charge of unlawful importation of a controlled substance committed on May 5th last.

After his arrest, he told gardaí that he had a gambling problem and had accrued a debt of $10,000. He said he hadn't packed the bag, but he knew it was “weed”. He claimed not to know how much was in the bag.

Marc Thompson SC, defending, told the court that his client came from a very good family and that his parents and siblings had flown over from California for the sentence hearing.

Napolitano's mother told the court that she felt “absolutely devastated” when she heard about the offence. She testified that it was the first time she knew anything about her son's gambling debt and the fact that he was receiving threats over it.

Judge Martin Nolan said this was a huge misjudgement on the part of the defendant, and he has to be punished. He imposed a four-year prison term, which he backdated to May 5th last, when Napolitano went into custody for this offence.