Former British Virgin Islands premier Andrew Fahie and his co-defendant in a drug smuggling and money laundering case pleaded not guilty to new charges, a court officer said Thursday.
Magistrate Judge Melissa Damian ordered Kadeem Maynard remain in a Florida jail cell while Fahie is out on $1 million bail Wednesday.
The superseding indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Miami charges the pair with conspiracy to import a controlled substance. The new charges are in addition to existing charges prosecutors leveled after Fahie, Maynard, and Maynard’s mother, former BVI ports managing director Oleanvine Pickering Maynard, were arrested in April.
Fahie, 51, and Pickering Maynard, 60, are charged with conspiracy to import a controlled substance (cocaine), conspiracy to engage in money laundering, attempted money laundering, and foreign travel in aid of racketeering.
Maynard, 31, has been charged with conspiracy to import a controlled substance (cocaine), conspiracy to engage in money laundering, and attempted money laundering.
They face the possibility of life in prison and $10 million in fines if convicted on all counts. The arraignment date of Pickering Maynard was yet unclear Thursday.
The trio was arrested April 28 following a months-long sting operation by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which alleged in a criminal complaint that they agreed to arrange safe passage of cocaine through the British Virgin Islands in return for payments of millions of dollars in cash.
Fahie and Pickering Maynard were arrested at the Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport where, according to court filings, they thought they were meeting members of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel to get $700,000 in cash. Maynard was arrested the same day on St. Thomas on a trip to arrange his first shipment of cocaine, as well as pick up a satellite phone and $30,000 in bribe money, prosecutors have alleged.
Pickering-Maynard and her son remain in federal detention in Miami, while Fahie is free on $100 million bail, confined to his daughters’ Florida apartment and under 24/7 GPS monitoring.
Prosecutors allege the group’s illegal activity started about Oct. 16, 2021. Last week, prosecutors shared tape recording evidence from November of 2021 with defense attorneys, as well as two discs of video clips from the day of the accused’s arrests.
Recently, federal prosecutors shared more than 8,000 minutes of audio tape evidence with Fahie’s lawyers, according to court filings. Along with the audio recordings, prosecutors handed defense attorneys phone records, WhatsApp data, law enforcement reports from Puerto Rico, and bank records. They also extracted “voluminous” video and other data from the defendants’ phones, according to the court documents.
According to the superseding indictment, Fahie, Maynard and Pickering Maynard face 10 years to life in prison on the drug charges, and 20 years on the money laundering charges if convicted. The racketeering charge carries a maximum penalty of five years.
They could also face fines of up to $500,000 on the money laundering charges, $250,000 up to $10 million on the drug charges, as well as forfeiting any property that was derived from illegal dealings, according to the superseding indictment. The racketeering charge carries a maximum fine of $250,000, it said.
Prosecutors said in their court filing that they expect it will take 12 days to try the case.
