SA ‘mule’ faces lengthy US prison sentence

A 46-year-old South African woman has admitted to sending ‘legal paperwork’ and greeting cards saturated with K2, a synthetic cannabinoid, to inmates in an Ohio prison. She now faces 20 years in jail. Tanya Baird, a mother of two who had a home-based cake business, was detained in the US in March. Baird entered a plea agreement with the authorities in June, which the Daily Maverick has seen. She admitted to ‘conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute a substance containing a detectable amount of the synthetic cannabinoid’. The plea also said Baird ‘admits that she is, in fact, guilty of this offence and will so advise the court’. The statement of facts says Baird would receive telephone requests for K2 from inmates who her fiancé, identified as James Johnson, directed to contact her. The statement says that Baird, using an address in Randpark Ridge, Johannesburg, sent about 69 packages of ‘fraudulent legal paperwork’ believed to be saturated with the drug.