'I can do anything an MBA can' - Reformed Criminal's Moment Of Truth

Charlie Gillis
National Post (Canada)
Monday, February 19, 2001

TORONTO - A former international drug smuggler who says he is determined to support his family through legal means is trying an unorthodox method of finding a job: He has purchased an ad in this newspaper.

In a for-hire ad running in today's National Post, Brian O'Dea of Toronto asks prospective employers to overlook the downside of his criminal past and consider the skills he acquired as a key player in a global narcotics smuggling operation in the 1980s.

The four-inch, 33-line ad is titled "Former Marijuana Smuggler" and details Mr.  O'Dea's involvement in a conspiracy to smuggle 68 tonnes of cannabis to the northwest U.S.  coast.

While the group landed and sold more than US$100-million worth of marijuana, they were captured in 1990 after a long investigation that saw 55 people, including Mr.  O'Dea, indicted on charges of conspiracy to import narcotics.

News reports described it as the biggest marijuana smuggling operation prosecuted on the Washington coast.

"Having successfully completed a 10-year sentence, incident-free, for importing 75 ( US ) tons of marijuana into the United States, I am now seeking a legal and legitimate means to support myself and my family," Mr.  O'Dea says in his advertisement, which appears on Page C8 of the paper.

Under "Business Experience," Mr.  O'Dea, 52, outlines the sprawling empire of businesses and employees he helped organize to complete the deal, which his group executed despite heavy scrutiny by U.S.  Drug Enforcement agents.

"Owned and operated a successful fishing business -- multi-vessel, one airplane, one island processing facility," the ad reads.  "Simultaneously owned and operated a fleet of tractor-trailer trucks conducting business in the United States.

"During this time, I also ...  participated in the executive-level management of 120 people worldwide, in a successful pot smuggling venture with revenues in excess of US$100-million annually."

Now living with a wife and son in a middle-class neighbourhood, Mr.  O'Dea admits to feeling conflicted about running the ad, knowing many readers will take a dim view of his history.

He had hoped to buy space in both of Canada's national newspapers, he says, but the Globe and Mail's advertising department turned him down without explanation.  The Post accepted the ad, which will run over six days at a cost to Mr.  O'Dea of $1,300.

"I don't have an MBA," Mr.  O'Dea said during an interview in a Toronto coffee shop, "but I can do anything an MBA can.  I don't have a PhD in business, however I have shown that I can accumulate wealth and operate and co-ordinate business as well as anyone.

"Maybe someone will read that ad and realize, jeez, not only did he operate that scheme, but he did it in secret.  That shows tremendous co-ordinating ability."

Mr.  O'Dea views the ad as a key step in rejoining life in the legitimate world.  Many friends and associates with whom he has invested in legal business ventures do not know his history, he says, and will be shocked to learn of his background.

"Some will want to step away, some won't," he said.  "But it has to happen eventually.  I'm in a position right now where the potential positives outweigh the potential negatives."

Bespectacled, soft-spoken but penetrating in his conversation and gaze, Mr.  O'Dea is open about his former swashbuckling life, which began with petty drug-selling in his birthplace of St.  John's, Nfld.  He graduated to importing marijuana and hashish from England in the early 1970s, but was caught in an RCMP sting in 1972.

He spent a few weeks in jail, then left for Jamaica, where he created a base from which he and others began importing marijuana from Colombia to the United States.

Mr.  O'Dea later moved to Los Angeles, where drug trafficking associates hooked him up with suppliers of Thai stick, a high-quality variety of marijuana available from growers in Vietnam.

Faced with a score to enrich him for life, he joined a group of investors and organizers from the United States, Canada, Britain and Germany to bring the drugs in.  The syndicate purchased two 100-foot vessels -- one to pick up the drugs in Southeast Asia, one to bring them into North America -- and planned two giant shipments to take place in 1986 and 1987.

"The boats would tie up together at arranged co-ordinates in the Bering Sea to make the transfer," Mr.  O'Dea recalls.  "Then the second boat would hide out in a fjord on the Alaskan coast and wait for word to bring it in."

Matters grew complicated, however, when a disgruntled member of the group went to federal drug enforcement officers in 1987.  By then, the team had landed the first shipment of about 25 tonnes and was organizing the second.

So the leaders resolved to buy a third boat they could use to sneak the drugs past DEA officers.  The shipment arrived in Bellingham, Wash., aboard the new boat in August, 1987 -- hidden amid raw salmon in waxed cardboard boxes.  It was unloaded in broad daylight.

It took three years for federal agents to build a case against the group, obtaining confessions from deckhands on the ships and working their way to the ringleaders.

By the time they arrested Mr.  O'Dea in 1990, he had left the drug trade altogether, dropping a debilitating cocaine habit and volunteering at a drug and alcohol recovery hospital in Santa Barbara, Calif.  And he would become a model prisoner: Mark Bartlett, the U.S.  Attorney who obtained a conviction against Mr.  O'Dea, later recommended him for transfer from Terminal Island penitentiary in California to a prison in Springhill, N.S., under a U.S.-Canada treaty.

"Your efforts in rehabilitating yourself have shown me you've made a conscious choice you want to be a contributing member of society," Mr.  Bartlett wrote in a letter of recommendation to Mr.  O'Dea.  "Your choice was made long before you were arrested in connection with our investigation, and was obviously a decision made sincerely, as opposed to a decision made to impress the court."

Mr.  O'Dea lists the prosecutor among his employment references in today's advertisement.

Since getting full parole in 1995, Mr.  O'Dea has received recognition from the RCMP and more than 100 schools for inspiring youngsters with speeches on his recovery from criminal life.  He has written a book about his experiences and is currently negotiating publishing and motion picture rights.

With much of his wealth confiscated under forfeiture laws, he depends on his wife, Susannah, to support him and their four-year-old boy, Rufus.  Since his prison term officially expired on Jan.  23, he has resolved to find his own job.

"I tell my story not because I want to relate some story of machismo and bravado," he told the Post in an e-mail yesterday.  "But because I want those who are troubled, disassociated, alone, frightened or broken as I was to know that, regardless of how far gone they may appear to be to themselves or others, there is a way home."