Gaston Danjou
News Conference
Sun Coverage
Sentencing will be held next month for a Canadian man who has pleaded guilty to charges related to smuggling a large stash of cocaine — 452 pounds valued at some $16.4 million — last August from California into Southern Nevada.
Gaston Danjou, 52, had been scheduled to go to trial next week in Clark County District Court on charges of trafficking in cocaine and transporting a controlled substance.
Danjou, however, has changed his plea to guilty to an amended complaint of trafficking in a controlled substance, according to court records.
Danjou, who has used a French interpreter in court, is scheduled for sentencing at 9 a.m. Feb. 21 before Judge Kathleen Delaney.
He is being held on $1 million bail in the Clark County Detention Center, where he has been since being arrested Aug. 10 near the Jean exit on Interstate 15 by a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper.
The trooper stopped him after becoming suspicious about the way Danjou was driving.
The trooper said Danjou, who was transporting construction materials on a flatbed, swerved into an adjacent lane three times.
Under questioning, Danjou told the trooper he was from Québec and was the owner of the truck. He said he was transporting the material for a private company, officer said.
The trooper became suspicious and got Danjou to allow for a search of his truck.
State troopers brought in a dog, which sniffed out the cocaine in 10 duffel bags that were in a hidden compartment in the truck’s sleeper area.
They found 170 bricks they estimated had a street value of $16.4 million.
According to officials, the truck had left the central valley of California and was en route to the Midwest.
It was unclear how Danjou obtained the cocaine, but investigators believe he was working for someone else because of the amount found in the truck.
Officials said the cocaine bust was the largest seizure ever made by authorities in Nevada.
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