An exceptionally unlucky drug smuggler, who attempted to transport 90 bales of marijuana stuffed inside the main cabin of a Newport Harbor sailboat in June 2013, must serve a 60-month prison sentence.
Nickolas Robert Leivas and another smuggler crashed their sailboat with a U.S. Coast Guard boat in pursuit in the wee hours of the morning, fled on foot through a Balboa Island neighborhood and escaped searching Newport Beach cops.
But Leivas had left his wallet and cell phone next to the bales of pot, and Department of Homeland Security agents eventually located him.
At the request of federal prosecutors inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse, U.S. District Court Judge Josephine L. Staton sealed large portions of the criminal case from public view, including the government's as well as Leivas' sentencing positions.
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But it is known that the 32-year-old smuggler must undergo supervised probation for five years upon his release from incarceration.
Staton also suggested that prison officials enroll him in a drug treatment program.
Leivas is presently housed at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.