Pot shipment busts itself

PALMER — To the trained investigator, there are a few ways to tell if a package contains marijuana.

You can bring in a dog to smell it. If it’s marijuana, often you can smell it yourself. Sometimes, though, it’s even easier. Like on Aug. 13, when investigators checking packages at FedEx found a box with five pounds of weed inside.

“Hand written on the side was, ‘I am full of dope,’” recounted Alaska State Trooper Shayne Calt in documents filed in a court case against David Botelho, 54, of Wasilla.

And that little note, as it turns out, led troopers to five or maybe 10 pounds of marijuana. Calt wrote that the trooper checking boxes actually first noticed the smell before seeing the note.

Either way, it was 16 inches by 16 inches by 15 inches and weighed 9.3 pounds, according to the shipping label. After troopers brought in a dog to confirm the contents, they opened it and pulled out five pounds of weed.

After that it was just a matter of making sure the person it was headed to actually took possession.

The address on the label was for a handyman service on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway. A trooper posing as a FedEx man brought it by, but nobody was there. Later, David Botelho called FedEx looking for it. Trooper Sgt. Mike Ingram called him back posing as an employee of the shipping company.

“The male on the phone (who Sgt. Ingram suspected was Mr. Botelho) told him he as actually expecting two parcels,” according to Calt’s affidavit.

FedEx employees later found the second package — it was the same size and a drug dog also “positively indicated for the odor of illegal drugs coming from the parcel.”

On Aug. 14, a trooper posing as a FedEx driver delivered the first package to the Palmer-Wasilla Highway address. Troopers took out most of the weed, but left four ounces inside.

Botelho met the disguised trooper outside, took the package and drove to a home on Greenforest Drive, later leaving with his son to meet an unidentified man before driving back to Greenforest, but stopping first at Taco Bell.

That’s when troopers pulled Botelho over.

Botelho’s son was driving, denied knowing anything about the marijuana, and asked for a lawyer.

His dad, meanwhile, admitted to calling and checking on one package but denied there was a second. When Calt confronted him with the fact he’d been talking to a trooper when he thought he’d been talking to FedEx, Botelho asked for a lawyer and that ended the conversation.

Calt estimates the street value of five pounds of marijuana at $20,000, which might actually be conservative estimate as it assumes a price for an eighth of an ounce of $31.25.

Botelho was charged with three felonies and one misdemeanor drug crime and arrested. As of Wednesday, his status in the state department of corrections database had him listed as housed at the Goose Creek Correctional Center.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.