importing almost $26,000 worth of cannabis.

Kemo Simons, of King's Gate Lane, Pembroke was yesterday found guilty of importing and possessing more than half a kilogram of cannabis with intent to supply on February 8 this year.

Magistrate Carlisle Greaves ordered Simons to serve a 30-month sentence for each of the two charges. The sentences are to run concurrently.

Earlier in the trial, Customs officer Karla Jean Gibbons told the court Simons -- who has a one-year-old son -- was stopped soon after arriving from Atlanta.

Ms Gibbons said an X-ray of a Zenith video machine carried by Simons revealed an "inconsistent'' interior.

And a brown, tape-wrapped package could be seen through the unit's tape slot door, she said.

Police officers later discovered four packages of cannabis with a total weight of 518 grams inside the machine.

And Det. Con. Terrence Smith said the drugs could yield $25,900 if sold in half gram packages, or $9,000 if sold by the ounce.

He also told Mr. Greaves the amount found was likely to be used for supply, but admitted it was possible one person could use the drugs for personal use.

Simons claimed he bought the video machine because he had received a message from a cousin in Bermuda requesting him to do so.

Once the machine was bought, it was accessible by any of four men with whom he stayed in Atlanta, he said.

"As far as I'm concerned any one of those guys could have done it (put drugs inside the VCR) when me and (my cousin) were out,'' he told Crown counsel Charmaine Smith.

But Mr. Greaves rejected Simons' claims of ignorance.

He said the mysterious nature of the message from his cousin to buy a VCR, the secrecy surrounding the same cousin's sudden appearance in Atlanta, and the fact that Simons was staying in a house with virtual strangers should all have aroused Simons' suspicions in these "drug-ridden days''.