A passenger who arrived on a ship at Port Everglades with two packages of cocaine duct-taped to his ankles and two more hidden in his luggage pleaded guilty to federal drug-smuggling charges Tuesday.
Ryan Gibson, 34, admitted he tried to smuggle slightly more than two pounds of the drug from his native Bahamas to South Florida. He was arrested soon after arriving on the Bahama Mama day cruise from Grand Bahama Island to Fort Lauderdale on Aug. 13.
When U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the Broward County port found two brick-shaped packages of the drug in his suitcase, Gibson asked them to “please not say anything,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Lindsey wrote in court records.
