A Michigan woman was slapped with charges after allegedly being caught trying to smuggle a hefty 74 pounds of marijuana out of Boston's Logan Airport en route to London, authorities reported. Nalexus Palmer, 28, from Clinton Township, was arrested this past Saturday and is now facing a trafficking marijuana charge for the large stash that officials estimate would be worth around $370,000 across the pond.
Customs officers and Massachusetts State Police intervened at the airport at about 9 p.m. after two large suitcases, teeming with vacuum-sealed bags of pot and tracked by Apple AirTags, were discovered. According to the powers that be at CBS Detroit, Palmer flew in from Detroit with eyes for the U.K., but was stopped before she could take flight.
Palmer plead a case of ignorance, claiming she was unaware of the suitcases' content which, she alleges, were dropped off by a woman she didn't even know. She spun a tale for the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office mentioning a man, met four years prior in Atlanta, who supposedly arranged the drop-off and regularly sent her money via Zelle and Cash App. "This man was allegedly going to give her cash for a car once she got to London," Palmer told the authorities, as NBC Boston reported.
Upon her court appearance before Judge Debra DelVecchio, Palmer was ordered to post $3,000 bail, hand over her passport, and steer clear from Logan except for the legitimate travel. Her brush with the law underlines a stark message from Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden: "While laws regarding simple possession in Michigan, Massachusetts and many other states may have changed, laws regarding marijuana trafficking haven't," as he reinforced in a statement obtained by Boston.com. Palmer and her legal woes are slated to return to court for a May 24 probable cause hearing.
Defending her innocence, Palmer's attorney Francisco Napolitano told boston.com, "She had no reason to suspect anything nefarious." Napolitano painted his client as a bewildered traveler who thought she was merely transporting innocuous packages overseas. As her family scrambles to cover bail, the case stands as a cautionary tale, drawing a bold line between personal possession and high-scale trafficking – a line that Palmer has allegedly crossed, with the heavy hand of the law now waiting on other side.
