Ismael Luna must have been excited in August 2012, when he found a buyer in Santa Ana for a MAC-10 gun and 28.3 grams of methamphetamine for $1,900.
But the buyer was a confidential informant working for the Santa Ana Gang Task Force.
When Luna (a.k.a “Sherman”) returned to make the sale, he stated he couldn't retrieve the weapon, though he did bring 27.7 grams of meth for $820.
Five days later, he sold the snitch another batch of the narcotic for $850, and found himself under arrest.
Assistant United States Attorney Amanda N. Liskamm believed the punishment should be 188 months in prison because Luna sold “one of the most dangerous and destructive street drug” and got caught actually selling a 45-caliber Colt pistol and a Russian 7.62-caliber SKS firearm during a period of months.
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The defendant's extensive rap-sheet was also bothersome. Prior to the present case, he'd suffered 13 other adult convictions, including committing eight burglaries, vehicular theft, grand theft, firearm possession and narcotics use. In a 1985 carjacking, he threatened to shoot his victim. When he's been released back into society on parole, he's committed at least 13 violations and been tied to criminal street gangs (F Troop and 2nd Street Sharks) targeted in law enforcement's “Smoking Aces” undercover operation.
Luna's defense lawyer argued for a term of no more than 120 months of incarceration.
But this week inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse, U.S. District Court Judge Andrew J. Guilford determined the appropriate punishment is 130 months (or about 94,000 hours) plus a term of supervised probation for four years upon his release from prison.
The 48-year-old drug dealer is now living inside 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.