By Breaking Belize News Staff: A Belize City man arrested with a crack pipe has found himself serving a three-year prison sentence after two unpaid fines from previous drug convictions caught up with him, including one dating back nearly a decade.
Erin Dillon Yacab, 28, a construction worker of West Street, appeared before a Senior Magistrate in Court #2 on Tuesday, October 13, charged with possession of utensils used for smoking a controlled drug.
Police say Yacab was found with a metal pipe on Tigris Street on Sunday, October 11. He pleaded guilty and was fined $200 plus $5 court costs, payable immediately, or face one month in prison.
However, a review of his court records revealed two outstanding fines from previous drug convictions. The first, dating back to 2016, was a $10,005 fine for possession of a controlled drug with intent to supply, carrying a default sentence of three years. A second unpaid fine of $1,505 from 2018 carried an eight-month default sentence.
With the fines remaining unpaid, the Senior Magistrate ordered Yacab to serve three years in prison, with the shorter default sentences not adding to the three-year term.
Yacab was escorted to the Belize Central Prison on October 13, nearly ten years after the conviction responsible for his lengthy prison sentence.
The post Belize City man fined $200 for crack pipe but ends up with 3 years in jail over unpaid $10,000 drug trafficking fine appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.