Quebec man gets conditional sentence on tobacco charge

A Quebec man charged in a seizure of almost three million illegal cigarettes on the Eastern Shore last January has been given a one-year conditional sentence.

Richard George Nelson, 44, of Lachine was sentenced Wednesday in Dartmouth provincial court. He pleaded guilty in June to a federal Excise Act charge of possessing unstamped tobacco products.

Crown attorney Mark Donohue told the court that Mr. Nelson was the driver of a tractor-trailer that delivered 299 cases of contraband cigarettes to Nova Scotia from Quebec on Jan. 28.

Most of the boxes were transferred to a smaller rental truck on a dirt road in Smiths Settlement, near Musquodoboit Harbour. The rest were stacked on a pallet and covered with a tarp.

RCMP followed the cube van to Lake Echo before stopping it and arresting the driver, Graham Leslie Murphy, 42, of Smiths Settlement. Mr. Nelson was taken into custody at the transfer site.

It was one of the largest-ever seizures of contraband tobacco in Nova Scotia, police said. If the cigarettes had been bought on the retail market, they would have been worth about $1.2 million.

Mr. Donohue said the contraband cigarettes would have cost the federal government about $250,000 in lost tax revenue had they reached the streets.

“Mr. Nelson was neither the planner nor the main benefactor of this,” defence lawyer Peter Planetta said in asking Associate Chief Judge Brian Gibson to accept a joint recommendation for a conditional sentence.

“He was the courier. He was hired to drive the truck.”

Mr. Nelson is on house arrest for the first six months of his sentence and then will have to follow an 11 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew for the next six months.

The Quebec man also pleaded guilty Wednesday to a provincial Revenue Act charge of possessing tobacco on which taxes had not been paid and was fined the minimum $250. He asked that the fine be taken from the $5,000 cash bail that was to be returned to him.

Mr. Murphy pleaded guilty in April to the same two charges. His sentencing is set for Nov. 3.