A senior was offered $90 for a package later found to contain $162,000 worth of heroin, a Supreme Court jury heard yesterday.

Franklin Pearman said that he received a package addressed to his son when a woman, later said to have been Angela Simmons, 60, came to collect the package.

Mr Pearman said the woman told him that her last name was Swan and that she was a friend of his son’s, who had allowed her to use his address to receive a package of cosmetics.

He added: “She said the package belonged to her; she gave me $90 in cash and said ‘hold on to that’.

“I said ‘the package is right there’ and she took the package and disappeared.

“I thought about it for a while because I thought it was strange.”

Ms Simmons and her co-accused, Tyrone Burchall, 50, have both pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to import diamorphine, commonly known as heroin.

The offence was alleged to have happened between an unknown date and October 3, 2019.

Mr Pearman told the court that he received the package around 11.30am and signed for it because he thought it was for his son.

He said: “I took the package upstairs where I was working, because I was doing some painting at the time.

“After five minutes, a lady came up to the house and approached me about the package.”

Mr Pearman said that he remembered the incident was “strange” and that it stuck inside his head for a while.

He added that he later saw police cars going down his street.

Marc Daniels, for Ms Simmons, suggested that he never asked the woman for her name and that she neither offered him money nor told him the package contained cosmetics.

He also suggested that Mr Pearman might have been confused by the exchange and was further confused when he spoke to police later that day.

Mr Pearman insisted this was not true.

Javone Rogers, for the Crown, told the court that Bermuda Customs inspected a DHL package from South Africa and found it had 70 containers of a powdery substance, later discovered to be 250g of heroin.

Customs contacted police, who tracked the package as it was delivered to Mr Pearman’s Devonshire home on October 3, 2019.

Mr Rogers said police officers stopped Ms Simmons and Mr Burchall in their car and found Mr Burchall’s business card, which had the same phone number as the one listed for the package’s return information.

The trial, in front of Acting Puisne Judge Mark Pettingill, continues.

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