A Surrey man has been sentenced to 13 years in a U.S. jail for “conspiracy to distribute cocaine and ecstasy.”
According to a news release issued Thursday afternoon by the U.S. Department of Justice, Kevin Donald Kerfoot, 53, fought extradition from Canada for more than a decade following a 2005 attempt to smuggle 41 kilograms of cocaine into the country.
Kerfoot was indicted in July 2006, nine months after his co-conspirators were arrested in the Bellingham area as they tried to move cocaine up the I-5 and onto a boat for transit to Canada, the release states.
The person who was going to ferry the cocaine to Canada brought more than seven kilograms of ecstasy into the U.S. for distribution via Kerfoot’s drug network.
After exhausting the extradition process in Canada, Kerfoot was transferred to the Western District of Washington and pleaded guilty in April 2017.
At the July 27 sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Thomas S. Zilly said Kerfoot, “was involved with a tremendous amount of drugs.”
“This defendant tried to avoid facing the music by getting people to lie during his Canadian extradition proceedings,” U.S. Attorney Annette L. Hayes said in the release.
“Perhaps he thought he could fight a war of attrition – but this office and our law enforcement partners are committed to holding leaders of drug trafficking organizations responsible for the poison they spread both here and in Canada.”
The other members of the smuggling ring were sentenced to prison terms ranging from six-and-a-half years to just over three years. All have since been released after serving their sentences.