A woman who smuggled cocaine into Ireland via Dublin Airport has been jailed by Judge Martin Nolan.
The Circuit Criminal Court heard that the woman, Cheston Hoogenboom, arrived on a flight from Brussels into Dublin airport on the 9th of November last and that customs officials had noticed an anomaly in her luggage on x-ray examination.
On further examination the luggage was found to contain 3 pallets totalling 160g of a substance suspected to be narcotics.
Customs officer Sorcha Byrne directed Hoogenboom, who said that she didn’t know the pallets were in her luggage , to an interview room and Garda at Ballymun Garda Station were called.
At 12pm Hoohenboom was informed that the drugs were being seized and a search and testing of her clothing did not recover any more drugs.
Garda Peter Kelly gave evidence that he arrested Hoogenboon at the customs area of Terminal 1 of Dublin airport under the Misuse of Drugs act and conveyed the Dutch passport holder to Ballymun Garda Station.
The luggage was found to contain 180g of what an initial test flagged as ketamine, however further testing determined that the substance was cocaine with an approximate value of €12,600.
The court heard that the 37-year-old, who has no previous convictions in this jurisdiction and no known previous convictions in any other jurisdiction, was cautioned by Garda Kelly who gave evidence that the accused indicated that she did not want the assistance of a solicitor after being conveyed to the station.
He said that the accused was cooperative during interviews and understood the charges.
She confirmed her personal details to be correct and acknowledged that the drugs were hers.
Due to concern that the accused may have more drugs concealed on her body she was taken to Beaumont Hospital for further examination and after an x-ray confessed that there was a package hidden in her vagina.
Hoogenboom was taken to an examination room and removed the package which was later revealed to be cocaine to the value of approximately €14,ooo.
The combined total value of cocaine found on her person which weighed approximately .38KG was in the region of €26,600
Admitting to ownership of the cocaine she said, “It’s on my person and I account for it myself”.
Hoogenboom’s defence counsel argued that his client had made full admission and that there was evidence that she was not going to be “substantially rewarded” due to Garda evidence that the address she intended to stay at in Dublin was a “dilapidated” part of the city.
Garda Kelly agreed that Hoogenboom “wasn’t the mastermind” behind the drugs smuggling plot and that it was believed that she had intended to pass the narcotics on to a third party.
The court heard that the state was not aware of who was at the top of the smuggling operation and that the accused with her defence saying that she was most likely merely a cog in a much bigger chain of command.
Pleading with Judge Martin Nolan to be “as lenient as you reasonably can”, Hoogenboom’s defence counsel argued that his client had declined the aid of a solicitor while in custody and “just got on with it” after admitting that the drugs were hers.
He argued that his client grew up in Rotterdam and has two children under 15 years who are in the custody of her friend for “a long time” as the accused suffers from “mental illness”.
He urged Judge Nolan to consider a letter of apology submitted to court as sincere and to take into consideration the ‘early plea of guilty’.
The court heard that Hoogenboom had experienced a “difficult childhood” and was “abused” and “abandoned” by her parents and that she has done a course on law and criminology as well as a course on judicial decision making.
“She is making the most of where she finds herself,” her counsel said.
Commenting that he has not himself done a course on judicial decision making, Judge Nolan asked what the accused intends to do with her life after release from jail to which the defence replied,
“I don’t really know that she knows herself” but that she is “trying to do something positive in prison for herself,”.
The defence counsel renewed his pleas for leniency and said that the offence before the court was “very much at lower end” of the scale and that Hoogenboom would find “‘custody more difficult as foreign national”.
Judge Nolan said that the offence of smuggling drugs into Ireland was a “serious crime” and that the accused had been part of an “ill organised” plot.
He said that there were clear mitigating factors such as her guilty plea, her cooperation with the authorities, that the quantity of the drugs was “quite low”, and that she was “unlikely to reoffend”.
He said that Hoogenboon was at the “lowest end of drug dealing enterprise” and the “bottom of the hierarchy”, adding, “hopefully she can change,” and that being in a foreign jail would be “difficult for her”.
Judge Nolan commented that Hoogenboom’s case was, “Not the most serious 15a this court has seen” sentencing her to an 18 month custodial sentence backdated to the 9th of November 2023 to account for time already spent in custody.