Durrant Pate/Contributor

A 33-year-old Jamaican, Rudolph Hylton, has been held in what the American Coast Guard says was part of a drug bust at sea.

He appeared in Fort Lauderdale federal court yesterday on charges that he was trafficking millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine and marijuana from Jamaica aboard a 45-foot boat.

According to a federal criminal complaint, the crew of US Coast Guard cutter Richard Etheridge conducted a routine boarding of the vessel, named “Lady B,” in the Atlantic Ocean, about eight nautical miles northeast of Haulover Inlet. Aboard the vessel were Hylton and a man identified as Aldon Delano Brown.

However, Brown was not listed in Broward or federal jail records as of Hylton’s court appearance, nor was he brought to court. The coast guard is reporting that both men are Jamaican nationals. 

Drugs found in hidden compartment 

During a seaworthiness inspection, the Coast Guard boarding team found manipulated panels, fresh fibreglass work, and, ultimately, “a hidden compartment under the floor inside the vessel’s cabin compartment that was well concealed with a small opening.” 

Under that compartment were 68 bricks of cocaine, totalling more than 70 kilograms―about 154 pounds―and 14 bricks of marijuana, totalling about 12 kilograms, roughly 26 pounds. The complaint doesn’t assign a street value to the drugs. 

Hylton reportedly told investigators that “he and Brown had taken the vessel to Jamaica from Fort Lauderdale” about a month prior and said that while on the island, “he was offered $100,000 to take the vessel back to Fort Lauderdale, knowing there (were) illegal narcotics that would be hidden on the vessel.”

He was taken into custody on three federal drug trafficking charges and booked into the Broward County jail on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service. Hylton remained jailed and is scheduled to appear in front of a federal judge for a pre-trial detention hearing next Monday.