A Chinese citizen has been sentenced to 55 months in prison for trafficking methamphetamine from California to Saipan.
The Office of the Attorney General for Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) announced on August 9 that Yang Liang was sentenced in the CNMI District Court on August 8 for conspiring to possess and distribute methamphetamine.
The judge also ordered Yang to report to local immigration officials for deportation proceedings after serving the 55-month sentence.
“Ice is a poison in our community,” said Shawn N. Anderson, the prosecutor for Guam and CNMI, in a statement. Methamphetamine is typically trafficked in solid or powder form, and the liquid methamphetamine involved in this case posed a unique danger to airline workers during the loading and unloading of cargo. The quantity of drugs seized in this case heightened concerns about the dangers posed by these activities.
Anderson added, “Our federal and local law enforcement partners have the expertise to detect such prohibited items in the mail system, regardless of their form.”
According to sentencing memorandum submitted by the prosecutor on August 1, Yang’s crime occurred in September 2023. The prosecution pointed out that Yang collaborated with accomplice Fang Ye to conceal 1,909 grams of liquid methamphetamine in four lava lamps and transport them from California to Saipan. Court documents indicated that the street value of the drugs at the time was as high as $763,600.
The court documents stated that Yang and Fang “induced another individual to act as a drug courier, having that person pick up the package at a private mail carrier on Saipan.” On September 27, 2023, law enforcement officers tracked down the recipient of the package through a “tracking order and surveillance group” and arrested Yang while he was in possession of the package.
The prosecutor stated that after his arrest, Yang admitted that another shipment containing a larger quantity of drugs was due to arrive in Saipan the following day.
The prosecution wrote in the documents that Yang assisted in a meticulously planned scheme to transport methamphetamine to Saipan and profit from a community plagued by meth addiction problems. The documents also cited a report from the Saipan newspaper Marianas Variety from last year.
According to the media report, the number of methamphetamine abuse cases involving children has “significantly increased,” with 40 cases involving 119 children in the 2024 fiscal year, higher than the 24 cases involving 74 children in the 2023 fiscal year.
In the end, the prosecution stated that approximately 8 pounds of liquid methamphetamine were seized. The Epoch Times was unable to reach Yang’s lawyer for comment.
Special Agent Anthony Chrysanthis of the Los Angeles division of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which oversees Saipan, said that as demonstrated in this case, drug trafficking organizations have been unabashedly profiting and employing bold and varied methods to transport drugs, whether hiding them in lava lamps or other packaging.
The prosecution mentioned that Fang Ye was sentenced to 25 years in prison in May in Saipan for conspiring to possess over 500 grams of methamphetamine with intent to distribute. He arrived in the Northern Mariana Islands via a visa waiver program from China in 2016 and failed to leave after his permit expired, instead operating a birth tourism business on Saipan for three years, catering to over 200 pregnant women and their families from China. He later became involved in methamphetamine trafficking.
In November 2022, CNMI police searched Fang’s residence and found over 1 kilogram of methamphetamine. Despite having an arrest warrant issued against him, Fang fled to Guam and continued his meth trafficking activities.
Ultimately, Fang went to Palau and was sentenced to 18 months in prison for manslaughter in March 2024. In May 2024, he was extradited back to the Northern Mariana Islands and pleaded guilty to the lava lamp smuggling case.