USVI Trafficking, laundering arrest made
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This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from February 1999.
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James Spencer Springette, 38, of St. Thomas, was arrested Saturday near a luxury apartment where he lived in Colombia' second largest city, said the state security agency, DAS.
The three-floor penthouse was adorned with expensive oil paintings, gold bathroom fixtures, gold table utensils and a steel-reinforced front door, said DAS spokesman Efrain Marin.
Springette was arrested on a U.S. government request, said embassy spokesman Robert Schmidt, who could not provide details on the capture or Springette's alleged criminal history. Colombia has an extradition treaty with the United States. In a statement, DAS described Springette as an expert in mapping Carribbean routes used by drug traffickers who drop cocaine in plastic bags which are picked up by speedboats offshore.
He is suspected of helping organise a nine-ton cocaine shipment seized in Panama in 1997 and the 1996 murder of a Virgin Islands official, the statement said.
Police said a Springette's passport showed he made 24 trips in and out of Colombia since 1994 - most of them to and from the United States via Panama.
He was caught carrying a Florida drivers' license with one of the eight aliases he went by.
