by Sabrina Salas Matanane

Guam - A federal drug case, has taken an interesting twist as one of the defendants has signed a plea agreement. Bertha Lee Moore was brought back to Guam back in June after she fled to the Philippines back in march.

Moore was charged in a federal indictment along with Eric Tedtaotao a former Department of Corrections officer and his wife Macrina. The three are accused of smuggling in large quantities of crystal methamphetamine from the Philippines to Guam. According to a plea agreement Moore confessed that on August 4th of 2012 she boarded a Philippine Airlines flight in Manila and arrived in Guam on the 5th. While in the baggage claim area the Guam Customs and Quarantine Agency drug dog alerted to her bag. A strip search was conducted but Moore turned up clean. It was after law enforcement officers advised her that she would be taken to the Guam Memorial Hospital for an x-ray to determine if she had any drugs inside her body, that Moore admitted she was concealing methamphetamines in her rectal cavity. According to court documents Moore had a total of four condoms containing methamphetamine inside her rectal cavity. The drugs were seized and sent to a lab in California for further analysis. According to the results the methamphetamine seized was 98.2 percent pure and weighed 107.9 grams.

Court documents further state that Moore admitted to federal authorities that she had been transporting methamphetamine from the Philippines to Guam for the Tedtaotaos since February 2011. She would repeatedly conceal it in her rectal cavity to avoid detection. Moore told the feds that one of her co-defendants would purchase her ticket to the Philippines and pay for her hotel room. When she returned either Macrina or Eric or the two together would visit her at home to weigh and package the drugs. In exchange for her cooperation with the case, the feds have agreed to recommend to the court a lower sentence.

According to news files a pre-trial conference is scheduled for August 14th with trial scheduled to begin on august 30th. The Tedtaotao's have pleaded not guilty. While Eric remains in custody, his wife Macrina was recently released and placed on house arrest and on electronic monitoring while she waits for the trial.