Judge sentences ‘mad man’ for attempting to smuggle millions in drugs into Canada on Jet Ski

The drugs found near Port Angeles, Wash., and were bound for Canada in a failed smuggling attempt. (U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington)

A senior who attempted to use a Jet Ski to smuggle millions of dollars worth of drugs into Canada has been sentenced to 15 years in a U.S. prison.

A Seattle judge on Friday described 69-year-old John Michael Sherwood as a “mad man desperate for money” when he planned to transport eight duffel bags loaded with more than 180 kilograms of methamphetamine and fentanyl across the Juan de Fuca Strait, between Washington state and Vancouver Island in 2021.

“At the end of the day, what you were doing would cause tremendous harm to thousands of individuals,” Judge Richard A. Jones said, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office for western Washington.

Sherwood was convicted following a six-day trial of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, possession of controlled substances with intent to distribute, and conspiracy to commit international money laundering.

• How a cross-border conspiracy to smuggle drugs into B.C. on a Jet Ski unravelled

The court heard that the Rhode Island man transported the drugs from California to Port Angeles, Wash.

He intended to ferry them across the border using a Jet Ski and an inflatable raft before delivering the bags to a contact on southern Vancouver Island.

‘Shocking discovery’

His plan was scuttled on April 6, 2021, when a family of campers on a Washington beach stumbled upon one of the duffel bags partially submerged in the tide.

According to court documents, they dragged the bag up the beach so it wouldn’t wash away. When it was still there the next morning, they opened it and called police.

Authorities found 25 kilograms of methamphetamine and one kilogram of powdered fentanyl inside.

W. Mike Herrington, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Seattle field office, said in a statement the “family’s shocking discovery of drugs at the beach exemplified the brazenness of Mr. Sherwood’s multiple plans to smuggle huge quantities of drugs into Canada.”

Sherwood’s criminal past includes perjury and money laundering schemes that spanned “state lines, international borders and several decades,” Herrington added.

Around the time the first bag was found, a beachcomber reported seeing a U-Haul van repeatedly coming and going from a secluded area, where a deflated Zodiac-style raft lay partially submerged in the water.

‘Tip of the iceberg’

Four days later, another beachgoer found seven more duffel bags hidden under a bridge leading to the water. Those bags contained roughly 155 kilograms of methamphetamine.

The local sheriff’s office estimated the total value of the seized drugs at US$7 million.

FBI agents traced the purchase of the duffel bags to two Walmart stores, where surveillance video showed Sherwood buying them with his debit card. U-Haul rental records, motel registrations, and storage locker activity also linked him to the plot, prosecutors said.

“The eight large duffel bags of methamphetamine found on the beach near Port Angeles are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this defendant’s drug smuggling,” said assistant U.S. attorney Neil Floyd in a statement.

“Evidence uncovered in the case shows he made multiple drug runs to the Washington-British Columbia border to connect with his co-conspirator in Canada,” Floyd added.

“This 15-year sentence is the result of his persistent and entrenched criminal behaviour.”

Canadian man also charged

At trial, prosecutors said Sherwood’s first attempt to cross the strait failed, causing some of the drugs to spill into the water.

After recovering what he could, Sherwood staged the remaining drugs on the beach for a second attempt. But when the cache was discovered, he fled and was later arrested in Montana after crashing his pickup truck into a bridge over a river.

“A suitcase full of methamphetamine was found in the river downstream from the bridge shortly thereafter,” the U.S. attorney’s office said in a 2024 statement about the case.

“The government believes that Sherwood had taken some of the drugs with him from Washington and after the accident he ditched them into the river before officers could respond to the scene.”

One of Sherwood’s alleged co-conspirators, B.C. resident Kevin Christopher Gartry, was charged in the case and is awaiting an extradition hearing. He remains in a Canadian prison following unrelated convictions in 2023.

U.S. prosecutors said Gartry was under RCMP surveillance during the 2021 smuggling attempt, when he was observed near Muir Creek beach, west of Sooke, B.C.

“This area is essentially directly across the strait from the area the methamphetamine was recovered,” the U.S. attorney’s office said in a 2024 statement. “During this surveillance, Gartry was seen towing a boat trailer, and also near a Jet Ski.”