A confidential informant working for Santa Ana police in August 2009 entered Hugo Perez’s audio store and asked to buy a quarter of a pound of methamphetamine.
Perez didn’t act offended or confused.
He directed the man to someone named “Hugo,” who ended up selling nearly 107 grams of methamphetamine to the informant, an agent of the Santa Ana Gang Task Force, for $4,800.
For his minor role in the transaction, Hugo paid Perez $100.
The money wasn’t worth it.
A Southern California grand jury indicted him in June 2010, and he eventually pleaded guilty in exchange for a reduction of charges.
Perez’s taxpayer-fund defense lawyer argued for a 41-month punishment. Federal prosecutors acknowledged the defendant’s minor role in the drug deal as well as his otherwise clean criminal record, but sought a 46-month prison term.
This week inside Orange County’s Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse, U.S. District Court Judge James V. Selna sided with the government.
When Perez, 44, emerges back into society he will undergo probation terms for three years.
He is also expected to participate in a lengthy, drug rehabilitation program.
Perez remains locked in the Santa Ana Jail under the custody of U.S. marshals and will be bused to a federal prison in coming days.
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.