FLORIDA- Notorious drug-boat captain Lothario Dion Rose was sentenced to 39 months in U.S. federal prison for smuggling marijuana on the high seas.
Rose, 47, tried to ram the U.S. Coast Guard vessel as his three Jamaican crew members tossed bales of ganja overboard on July 5, 2020.
Authorities disabled Rose’s Jamaican-registered go-fast boat with gunfire. They boarded the vessel and seized 3,904 pounds of marijuana, inclusive of the jettisoned drugs.
The drug bust happened 45 nautical miles west of the south claw of Haiti.
However, U.S. authorities assumed jurisdiction after Jamaican officials waived their rights over the vessel.
Rose, who’s also known as Dion “Buju” Minnis, has multiple convictions in The Bahamas for drug trafficking.
In spite of his criminal history, Rose’s lawyer, Albert Levin, claimed that his client had “never been arrested anywhere in his life.”
According to Levin, Rose “went to Jamaica to find work as he was food insecure in The Bahamas.” While in Jamaica, his co-defendant, Michael Vaccianna, offered a him job to smuggle drugs, Levin claimed.
Levin said that Rose dropped out of school in fifth grade and “could barely read and write English.”
Rose, Vaccianna, Louis Gowie, and Dewan McCook all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess a controlled substance with intent to distribute a controlled substance on board a vessel.
Vaccianna received a 40-month prison sentence; Gowie got 36 months and McCook was sentenced to 32 months.
