A man who attempted to help unload 566 kilograms of smuggled marijuana to Laguna Beach from a Mexican boat in February has been sentenced to prison.
Kevin Anthony Gilbert, who attended East Los Angeles College and played football, sought a punishment of no more than 30 months in prison because he argued he played a minor role in the crime; he didn't even know how much he would be paid for unloading the pot.
But officials inside the U.S. Probation Office as well as the Department of Justice considered the crime serious and wanted Gilbert to receive a 46-month sentence.
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U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter agreed with the government recommendations.
At the July 29 hearing inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse, Carter also ordered Gilbert, who was born in 1990, to undergo federal supervised probation for three years after he returns to freedom.
Gilbert, who was released on $50,000 bail during the case but had difficultly staying out of trouble, won a punishment reduction by quickly admitting his guilt following his arrest by federal agents.
The convicted felon apparently has a substance abuse problem; Carter recommended to prison officials that they enroll Gilbert into a 500-hour counseling program, according to court records.
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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.