CUSTOMS AGENT PLEADS GUILTY TO MARIJUANA-SMUGGLING CHARGE

A former Canadian customs officer pleaded guilty Monday in a Minnesota courtroom to attempting to smuggle more than 20 kilograms of marijuana into the United States last May.

Gary Graboski, a former border inspector with the Canadian Border Services Agency, will be sentenced Oct.  25 in Roseau County District Court on one count of first-degree conspiracy to smuggle drugs.  He was being held in the Lake of the Woods County jail in Baudette, Minn., yesterday.  The maximum penalty is 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

Graboski, 35, was arrested in a pickup truck May 13 just south of the tiny Pinecreek border station.  The resident of Emerson, who was off-duty from his post in Sprague at the time, was stopped by police acting on information he was smuggling hydroponic marijuana, likely grown in the Winnipeg area, into the U.S.

Police found 50 pounds of marijuana stuffed in hockey bags in the back of his truck.  Police have said the estimated street value of the pot seized from Graboski's truck was $4,000 U.S.  per pound, totaling about $200,000 U.S.

Investigators then got Graboski -- who has been suspended without pay -- to wear a hidden "wire" to record his meeting with a contact in the U.S., Loran M.  Stewart, 37, of Calgary.  The men met at a self-service car wash in Warroad, Minn., and when the marijuana was exchanged, police swept in.  Both men were arrested and their vehicles were seized.  Stewart has already been found guilty of second-degree conspiracy to commit a controlled substance crime and was sentenced on Sept.  3 to two years and two months in prison.

An official said Graboski's plea applied to two incidents, the attempted smuggling of marijuana into Roseau last March, and the attempt to deliver marijuana to Stewart in May.

Police had Graboski under surveillance since May 3, and on May 12 saw him take possession of three, large black hockey bags and a dark suitcase while at a car wash in Winnipeg.  After his arrest, he admitted bringing another large shipment across in March and leaving it for three other couriers, who checked into a Roseau motel and were later caught.

Police in Winnipeg have said they believe an unknown percentage of marijuana grown in Winnipeg is smuggled into the U.S.  About 80 hydroponic "grow ops" have been discovered in the city since Jan.  1, many in residential homes in the city's suburbs.

Graboski's plea comes almost a month after a White House report said Canada's relatively lax penalties for marijuana producers and the proposed move towards decriminalizing pot could be an "invitation" to organized crime to smuggle Canadian-grown pot south.