Ukrainians Smuggle $10M Coke on Ghost Ship

Two Ukrainians have been sentenced to 25 years in federal prison each for smuggling $10 million worth of cocaine aboard a stolen-identity sailboat deep in the Caribbean. Igor Polshyn (42, Yalta, Ukraine) and Oleskii Tsurkan (52, Moscow, Russia) were handed their sentences by U.S. District Judge Susan C. Bucklew in Tampa, Florida, closing a high-seas drug case that reeked of old-world smuggling tactics and modern brazenness.

On November 7, 2015, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection P-3 Orion aircraft spotted a darkened sailboat 56 miles south of the Dominican Republic, crawling through the night without lights. The vessel was locked on a trajectory through the Mona Passage — a notorious smuggling corridor between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. The Orion crew flagged the Coast Guard, which dispatched the USCG Cutter Bernard C. Webber. They intercepted the boat 26 miles south of the Dominican Republic, still en route to U.S. waters.

The sailboat flew the Spanish flag and bore a legitimate registration number — one later traced to an actual vessel near Barcelona. But this was a fraud. The interdicted craft was a ghost ship, operating under stolen papers to vanish in plain sight. Polshyn, listed as the master, and Tsurkan, the only other man aboard, offered no resistance. But during a safety sweep, Coast Guard personnel pried open a bilge access and found more than 100 kilograms of cocaine stashed beneath the floor.

That was just the beginning. Over the next hours, officers recovered an additional 270 kilograms of cocaine hidden throughout the vessel — some of it mixed in with food supplies. The total haul: 370 kilograms (814 pounds) of high-grade cocaine, with an estimated wholesale value of $10 million. The drug load was enough to fuel street markets across multiple states and represented one of the larger maritime busts in recent years.

A federal jury convicted both men on September 30, 2016, after a trial that laid bare the mechanics of transnational drug smuggling. Evidence showed the vessel’s identity theft, navigation patterns, and the calculated effort to evade radar and patrols. The case was led by the Panama Express Strike Force — a joint Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) involving DEA, FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, Coast Guard Investigative Service, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and Joint Interagency Task Force South.

Assistant United States Attorney Thomas N. Palermo prosecuted the case, emphasizing the threat posed by foreign traffickers using maritime blind spots to flood American communities with narcotics. The 25-year sentences reflect the severity of the crime — conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine on a U.S.-jurisdiction vessel. For Polshyn and Tsurkan, the open sea offered a highway. Now, they’ll serve quarter-century stretches behind federal bars.