Human trafficking a family business? Wife of current suspect was jailed in ’05

One of the three Canadian men arrested Sunday near the Maine border with two Guyanese nationals and charged with human trafficking has been in court before – when his wife was sentenced for a similar crime in federal court in Bangor.

Byron Murray, 56, John Wayne Richardson, 47, and his son John Jason Richardson, 20, all of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, were arrested Sunday night near a train trestle that crosses the St. Croix River from Monhannes, New Brunswick, to Baileyville, Maine.

Murray stood behind his wife in October 2005 in U.S. District Court in Bangor when she was sentenced to 132 days in jail, or time served, for alien smuggling.

At the sentencing of Savita Singh-Murray, 40, of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, U.S. District Judge John Woodcock raised the question of whether the woman had been involved in human trafficking when she tried to smuggle three illegal aliens from her former homeland, Guyana, into the U.S. at the Calais border crossing in the summer of 2005.

Guyana is a former British colony on the northern coast of South America bordered by Venezuela to the west, Brazil to the south, and Suriname to the east.

The judge sternly admonished Singh-Murray for her involvement with what he suspected was a plot to bring young women into the country to be forced to work as prostitutes. Woodcock said that Guyana is on an international human trafficking watch list.

Fifteen months later, her husband and two other men have been charged with attempting to smuggle two people into the U.S. The three were released on bail Tuesday after an appearance in Provincial Court in St. Stephen, New Brunswick.

The men face maximum sentences of 10 years in prison.

The two Guyanese nationals, Deoranie Ramkissoon and a 17-year-old boy, believed to be the woman’s son, were being held Wednesday by the Canada Border Services Agency.