Co-conspirators in multiple drug cases were sentenced in federal court this week, including one who worked with a Juneau man to bring drugs from California to Alaska.
Jorge Lopez-Villareal, a 29-year-old Mexican citizen, was sentenced Thursday to three years in prison and four years of supervised release. Lopez-Villareal pleaded guilty to one count of drug conspiracy after he and Juneau man Carlos Zavala-Flores were caught with 6.8 pounds of cocaine and 22 pounds of marijuana in April 2017 in Oregon, according to charging documents. The plan was purportedly to take the car (a 1999 gray Chevrolet Tahoe with California plates) onto a barge in Washington and bring it up to Alaska to sell the drugs.
Zavala-Flores was sentenced this summer to three years in prison and five years of supervised release.
Chief U.S. District Judge Timothy M. Burgess handed down the sentence in the Robert Boochever U.S. Courthouse in Juneau.
Two co-conspirators in a Ketchikan drug case were also sentenced this week in Juneau. Ketchikan men Jaypee Tolsa Lorenzo, 32, and Matthew Steven Speers, 27, were sentenced for their roles in a drug conspiracy that connected the Philippines, Las Vegas and Ketchikan, according to the plea deals. They worked with Neptali Yadao Dadia, 40, also of Ketchikan, according to the plea deals.
On Thursday, Lorenzo was sentenced to 15 months in prison and four years of supervised release, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack Schmidt said. Speers was sentenced to five years in prison with five years of supervised release in an emotional court hearing Friday. Schmidt prosecuted both cases, and said Speers had a mandatory minimum of five years for the crime.
According to their plea agreements, the three men were part of a conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine in Ketchikan in August 2017. The three were arrested in Ketchikan on Oct. 24, 2017, according to an Alaska State Troopers dispatch. The plea agreements allege the men coordinated the sale of meth in Ketchikan by working with a co-conspirator outside the country and another co-conspirator to ship meth up from Las Vegas to Ketchikan using commercial package delivery services.
According to the plea deals, Dadia would sell Speers one ounce of meth for $3,000, and Speers would then sell some of it before sending the remaining meth to Lorenzo, who then delivered the drug proceeds and remaining drugs to Dadia. According to the agreements, the three men possessed at least 53 grams of meth with the intent to distribute it.
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at 523-2271 or amccarthy@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @akmccarthy.
