A special-education teacher at Leilehua High School is in federal custody, accused of receiving methamphetamine shipments from the mainland and sending proceeds from their sale back to California.
A Honolulu police officer who is a member of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Honolulu Airport drug task force arrested Janice Pualani Fontes on Tuesday. She appeared in U.S. District Court on Wednesday and is scheduled to return to court Monday for a hearing to determine whether she should remain in custody without the opportunity for release on bail.
The DEA said in documents submitted in court Wednesday that the officer located Fontes at Leilehua High during school hours. Fontes agreed to talk to the officer off campus, where he arrested her.
Fontes told the officer she agreed to receive the drugs, collect the proceeds and send them to California for Raul Garcia, a convicted felon with whom she has kept in contact for the past 20 years, 17 of them while he was in prison.
She said Garcia visited her last September, following his release from prison, and she agreed to marry him. She said she later learned that the marriage was not valid because Garcia was still married to somebody else.
She also said Garcia could not move to Hawaii because he was on probation in California.
Fontes said Garcia asked her in January to start collecting his drug proceeds because he did not receive a previous money parcel from somebody else.
She told the DEA that she sent Garcia approximately $6,000 in drug proceeds every week. She said the money was dropped off at her home on Karsten Drive in Wahiawa. The money was sometimes placed in her mailbox or on her porch in envelopes.
The DEA said Fontes received the drug shipments at her home and at her ex-husband’s home, also in Wahiawa.
Fontes said Garcia paid her $2,500 per month.
The DEA said its agents were alerted to Fontes’ activities when it intercepted a FedEx parcel May 2 containing 313 grams of methamphetamine sent to her ex-husband’s address from California. Agents then learned that the FBI was investigating Fontes for allegedly sending drug proceeds out of Hawaii after U.S. postal inspectors intercepted a parcel containing $4,000 in cash she mailed to California.
