Outwardly Ordinary Cruising Dude Caught En Route to Florida With 31 Haitians Down Below
Sunseeker 58 Motoryacht Was 'Compensation,' Sailor Tells Feds
“Campton admitted to receiving vessel FL9305RW as compensation for conducting human smuggling ventures.” —Joshua Stanbery, lmmigration and Customs Enforcement.
Cruising is expensive, which is why many of us find ways to earn money along the way. Some are diesel mechanics or refrigeration techs. Some write for (very little) pay. Some pick up a delivery job or two. Nowadays, Starlink day-trading could be a lucrative thing.
Possessors of the showmanship gene, video-editing skills, vibrant tattoos (and who also happen to have a persistently half-naked young woman in the crew) may aspire to a monetized YouTube channel.
This story is not about the usual ways of making money while living aboard. This is a story about an outwardly normal cruising sailor, who, according to the feds, was living a double life.
Last Friday, Derek Ryan Campton, 43, was caught coming into the Florida Keys from the Bahamas, piloting a 58-foot motoryacht with 31 migrants—nearly all of them Haitians—crowded down below.
The feds had been tipped off that a people smuggler was on the way, and a veritable everything bagel of law enforcement was waiting for him. He was intercepted.
The Indiana native, who had worked as a plumber, handyman and landscaper, confessed almost immediately to being a paid people-smuggler, and Campton's statement to a federal agent suggests it was not his first rodeo either.
The vessel was identified in the criminal complaint only by a Florida registration number, but she appears to be a Sunseeker, which may have been purchased by someone in Miami in September. The asking price in the brokerage listing was $359,000.
“Campton admitted to receiving vessel FL9305RW as compensation for conducting human smuggling ventures,” Joshua Stanbery of lmmigration and Customs Enforcement wrote in an April 22 affidavit filed in U.S. District Court, Fort Lauderdale.
Campton was not living on the motoryacht. According to the affidavit, Campton was living aboard another vessel in the Bahamas. According to Facebook posts by buddy-boating friends, Campton was living aboard a sailboat called Wandering Star with his wife Sherri.
Sherri Campton was a co-signer on the $100,000 surety bond that secured her husband’s release from jail pending trial. He’s also required to wear a GPS ankle-monitor. He’s not allowed to go back to the Bahamas.
Bling
According to the couple’s own Facebook pages and that of the Epiphany Sailing group, Campton had recently tricked out Wandering Star with the kind of colored hull lights usually found on yachts and sportfish boats. In October, the Camptons took delivery of a new RIB tender, which appears to be the same boat hanging off the davits of the smuggling vessel when she was seized.
The Campton’s path to the Bahamas went through the Florida Keys, including stints at Boot Key Harbor, and Miami. Their time in the Bahamas, right up until Campton’s arrest, appears to have been in and around Nassau on New Providence Island.
It was not immediately obvious when and where the couple purchased Wandering Star, which can be identified by what appears in pictures to be a star symbol on her port and starboard bows. The Camptons do have ties to North Port, a city near Sarasota in Florida. In May 2022, they sold a house there for $315,000.
The Camptons had been arrested once before, though the offense was minor. In September 2018, they were caught trying to—you might say—smuggle items out of a Charlotte WalMart without paying for them. The items totaled $259 and included two bags of raw chicken. The contraband had been hidden under stuff that was paid for.
Derek Campton was sentenced to probation and community service, plus court costs. The charges against Sherri Campton were eventually dropped.
Poor Haiti
As conditions in Haiti deteriorated recently from bad to worse to a living nightmare, more people became desperate to get out. First they flee to the Bahamas, often as passengers aboard native Haitian sloops.
The next step is to book a second ride to Florida, but not on ramshackle island craft. The idea nowadays is to conceal migrants on the types of vessels commonly operated by American recreational boaters crossing the Gulf Stream—sportfish boats or a Sunseeker 58, for example.
A ticket to ride can cost up to $8,000 per person, according to news reports. Assuming space for Campton’s April 19 voyage was being sold for $5,000 per person, the take would have been $155,000, which means the vessel would have more than paid for itself in three such trips (assuming the price Loose Cannon found in the listings).
On Wednesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis boasted that his get-tough-on-illegal-migrants policies were deterring Haitians from trying to reach Florida by boat. DeSantis appears to have referred to the Campton bust, though his speech added an extra nine souls to the migrant count.
Ronald Surin, a former vice president of the Haitian Lawyers Association and president of the Haitian American Democratic Club of Broward County, was quoted in the South Florida Sun Sentinel as saying that people in Haiti “do not pay any attention to what the governor of Florida does before they leave on a boat.”
The other problem with the governor’s braggadocio is one of logic. While authorities have precise numbers for migrants who are captured, they can only guess at how many get through.
Let's concede that Campton—a guy unable to outwit WalMart security—was probably not the mastermind of the operation. How many successful human-smuggling voyages were his enablers able to organize before this latest fail?
Campton’s buddy-boating pals might have some insight on the matter, but they’re not talking, at least not to Loose Cannon.
Best line ever: "Let's concede that Campton—a guy unable to outwit WalMart security—was probably not the mastermind of the operation."
Good writing as always. I hope they fry him. I’m have enough of criminal aliens. We are in trouble.