Born in St. John's, Newfoundland in 1948, he first worked as a minordrug dealer in the province. Moving up he became an importer of marijuana to Canada from the United Kingdom. After being arrested on a minor charge in Canada he served a brief sentence before moving to Jamaica, where he coordinated marijuana and cocaine smuggling operations going from Colombia to the United States and Canada. Moving to California, he became one of the leaders in exporting marijuana from Southeast Asia in the years after the Vietnam War. Using fishing vessels as cover he brought boatloads of drugs into the pacific northwestUnited States. Controlling a trucking company, two hundred-foot fishing vessels, and a workforce of 120, O'Dea and crew imported hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of marijuana to ports in Washington at the business' peak in the early 1980s. He and his partners would then sell the drugs throughout the United States. Under increasing threat from the Drug Enforcement Administration, he quit the business in 1986, but his life declined and he became addicted to drugs. After suffering an overdose in 1988 he quit drugs, becoming a drug and alcohol addiction counselor. Three years later, however, the DEA finally had assembled a case against him and arrested him. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to ten years in jail, being transferred to the Springhill Penitentiary in Canada in 1992.
Parole
In 1993, he was paroled and became a venture capitalist in Toronto. He attracted much media attention in 2001 when he published an advertisement in the National Post through which he attempted to obtain employment by highlighting aspects of his drug smuggling endeavors, including his personnel and logistics management skills. He went on to become a television and film producer, producing a number one show, Creepy Canada, which aired on the OLN and Destination America networks
Book
He wrote the book HIGH: Confessions of a Pot Smuggler, released 11 April 2006, in July, and in May 2009 by Other Press for the USA market. His book won the 2007 Arthur Ellis Award for Best True Crime Book. O'Dea can be heard narrating the 2009 documentary Hangman's Graveyard, which tells the story of an archaeological investigation at Toronto's Old Don Jail to uncover a long forgotten cemetery.
Television
In 2012, O'Dea appeared as Kevin O'Leary's advisor on the CBC Television Reality TV ShowRedemption Inc., a show where ex-convicts compete for a chance to have Kevin O'Leary invest in their legitimate start-up business, and earn redemption. O'Dea told his story of smuggling drugs, getting caught and changing his life in the "Trust Me" segment of the Snap Judgment radio show.
