A man conspired with his employer to import ecstasy and cannabis hidden in forklift truck parts, a prosecutor alleged yesterday.

The discovery was made by a sniffer dog checking cargo at L.F. Wade International Airport last January.

Vernon Simons, 24, is now on trial at Supreme Court for allegedly conspiring with his employer, Shannon Tucker, and others not before the court, in the plot. He denies the allegation.

Tucker, 33, pleaded guilty on Monday to conspiring to import the drugs and is awaiting sentence.

Opening the case against Simons yesterday, Senior Crown counsel Carrington Mahoney told the jury that he and Tucker left Bermuda on December 12, 2007, travelling together to New Jersey. They ended up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where they went to a forklift company on December 13 and purchased the machine parts in question.

They took them to another Pennsylvania forklift company four days later where Tucker got a staff member to send the items to Bermuda via Federal Express.

Mr. Mahoney said the pair travelled back to the Island on December 18 and the machine parts arrived as air cargo on January 8, 2008. They were intercepted by the authorities after the sniffer dog alerted them to the presence of drugs. X-rays revealed packages of ecstasy tablets and cannabis stashed inside.

The Police cut open the metal parts, removed the narcotics, and replaced them with a piece of lumber to provide the same weight. They then resealed the parts and painted over the cuts, before arranging what Mr. Mahoney described as a "controlled delivery".

Surveillance officers watched as Simons and Tucker arrived at the Federal Express office the following day and picked up the machine parts. Both were subsequently arrested and the parts were seized.

Mr. Mahoney told the eight women and four men of the jury: "We are saying the accused was party to Tucker's effort in getting these items, these illicit drugs, into the parts and bringing them to Bermuda."

The court heard from various Police and Customs officers how the truck parts were photographed and dusted for fingerprints, and how the airway bill on them was addressed to Tucker.

Sergeant Adrian Cook described how he attended a Police briefing on January 9 last year about a conspiracy to import drugs. He was shown photographs of Tucker and Simons. He later positioned himself by TCD on North Street where Simons lives and saw Simons jump out of a taxi and take the parts out of a truck driven by Tucker. Later, he attended Tucker's residence in Port Royal, Southampton, where he saw him unload the parts and tap on one of them when it was on the ground.

"I formed the impression that he was testing it to see if it was hollow," explained Sgt. Cook.

Detective Constable Trevor Knight told the court he stopped Tucker's blue truck on Spring Benny Road, Sandys, on January 9, 2008 and arrested him. He later recovered the blue machine parts from Tucker's mom's house on that street. He arrested Simons the following day.

The jury was played a tape-recorded Police interview conducted with Simons five days later. In it, he told Det. Con. Knight that although he and Tucker left Bermuda and arrived back on the same flight, this was a coincidence and he was travelling alone, not with Tucker.

Simons said he stayed at a hotel in Philadelphia for about a week by himself as a break from Bermuda, and he didn't know where Tucker went after they arrived in the States. However, he agreed with the officer that Tucker was on the same shuttle as him from Philadelphia to the airport in New Jersey on the way home.

When Det. Con. Knight suggested that Simons contributed $7,000 and Tucker contributed $10,000 to get the drugs shipped back to Bermuda in the machine parts, Simons responded that he did not have $7,000 and "it's not true at all".

The case continues.