Lance William Sigue might still be working Anaheim and Santa Ana streets as a dangerous 28-year-old drug dealer, but his own abject stupidity brought him to the attention of Orange County Sheriff's Department deputies, Anaheim police and ATF agents.
In May 2009, Sigue had been enjoying a brisk business outside the view of law enforcement when he decided it'd be fun to send mail to an an accused drug dealer inmate at the Orange County Jail.
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Any idiot–but especially convicted felons like Sigue–knows that deputies inspect all mail.
Nonetheless, he sent the inmate photographs of piles of cash and persons flashing gang signs.
Officers didn't have to work too hard to learn the identity of the person who sent the mail.
Sigue, who was on probation from prison for prior convictions, wrote his name and Santa Ana address on the envelope.
Raids
on Sigue's home and vehicle discovered seven grams of methamphetamine, drug
dealer equipment, numerous weapons including a shotgun and Glock, ammunition, more than $7,000 in cash and photographs that tied him to the Crips.
Following a change of pleas, Sigue learned his fate this week at the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana.
In hopes of getting the minimum allowable punishment negotiated with federal prosecutors, Sique–a Santa Rosa native–told U.S. District Judge David O. Carter
that he is sorry for his crimes, never knew his father and grew up living in poor neighborhoods on
welfare.
Carter accepted the deal and now Sigue must serve a 15-year prison sentence.
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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.