An American caught with more than $200,000 of cannabis in a suitcase at Bermuda International Airport is today starting a four-year prison sentence.

Customs officials swooped on New Yorker Tonia Lavette Davis and found 4,500 grams of the drug.

Crown counsel Cindy Clarke told a Supreme Court sentencing hearing yesterday that the amount found would have filled more than 9,000 $25 ?bags? usually sold by dealers ? giving the haul an estimated street value of $227,600.

Davis was snared just after 10 a.m. last July after arriving in Bermuda on a flight from New York. She cleared immigration and collected one item of checked luggage.

In the inspection area, Ms Clarke told the court, customs officers examined her case and found it to be ?unusually heavy even when emptied?.

The case was scanned and this revealed several rectangular-shaped packages hidden in the base. Customs officials cut the bottom lining of the suitcase and found the packages, containing plant-like material, were wrapped in a plastic material and had been fixed to the bottom of the case.

Tests carried out by forensic Police officers later revealed that the packages contained a total of 4,552 grams of cannabis.

Ms Clarke said that when questioned Davis initially stated her friend, Rhonda Miller, sent her on the trip to Bermuda. She later told Police that her boyfriend and his friend paid for both Miller and herself to travel.

She also said that she did not come to Bermuda to meet anybody in particular, but then stated that she was sent to collect money on behalf of her boyfriend in the US.

Ms Clarke said that Davis, 35, admitted that the suitcase where the drugs were found was given to her by her boyfriend. She added she had no knowledge that the packages were hidden in the bottom, and added that her boyfriend had ?set up? Miller and herself.

Charles Richardson, mitigating, said previous cases suggested the sentence for this type of offence should be between three and five years in jail.

He said he did not believe that Davis had ever said Miller had sent Davis to Bermuda and that it was in fact the other way around, with Davis asking Miller to accompany her.

Mr. Richardson said it appeared that Davis had knowledge of the packages. He said that she knew what her boyfriend was into, and suspected something might have been inside but ?turned a blind eye? and that was the basis of her guilty plea.

Davis, of First Avenue, New York, admitted a charge of importing a controlled drug on July 7, 2005. She told the court yesterday that she was sorry and willing to take responsibility for her actions.

Puisne Judge Carlisle Greaves, sentencing the defendant to four years, ordered that a second charge of possession with intent to supply should remain on file.

Rhonda Yvette Miller, 31, of Long Beach, California, was originally on the same indictment as Davis. She was discharged from the indictment at an earlier hearing after Davis pleaded guilty to importing.