A Canadian woman is today beginning a three-year jail sentence after smuggling cocaine into Bermuda to earn $5,500.Kayla Nicol, 22, wanted to pay for her mother to renovate her house, according to her defence lawyer.Nicol was quizzed by Customs officials after she arrived on a commercial flight on January 16. She admitted she’d concealed the drugs in her body, and retrieved two condoms stuffed with the cocaine during a strip search.The cocaine weighed 202.8 grams and had a street value of $48,750.Nicol, a health clinic worker from Scarborough, Ontario, pleaded guilty on January 20 to conspiring with others not before the courts to import the drugs.At her sentencing hearing yesterday, prosecutor Cindy Clarke told Magistrate Khamisi Tokunbo that Nicol had not assisted the authorities with information about others involved in the plot.Nicol would have been entitled to a discount on her sentence if she had done so.Defence lawyer Kenneth Savoury insisted she does wish to help but “she’s concerned for the safety of her family in Toronto and for the safety of herself if she gives information”.He said she should not be punished with a stiffer sentence because of that, and insisted she only played a minor role in the plot, acting as the mule.He explained: “She was lured into it with the promise that she would be given $5,500 for her role in this matter. She recognises that she was wrong.“She says she did it against her better judgement because of the pressure of the other party [to the plot] who’s in Canada.”Mr Savoury added: “She said that the main reason why she thought she would do this was to help her mother. Her mother was renovating her home and needed some extra cash and she thought she would assist her mother. The funds she was making from her job was not enough.”Nicol apologised to the magistrate for her actions and said: “I wasn’t thinking about the consequences of my actions and how they would affect my life or the community of Bermuda.”Mr Tokunbo told her a three-year prison term was appropriate “given the amount of the drugs and the need to deter this kind of thing”.