Two pleaded guilty in cocaine bust

Lori Glenn

May 12, 2008 10:32 pm

— MOULTRIE — Two Colquitt County men have pleaded guilty in association with a 2007 case in which six kilos of powder cocaine was found in a chicken coop in the Hopewell Church Road area.
One of the men posted photos on a social networking Website posing with cash, an AK-47 and a six-shooter plus other guns in his belt, which tipped off Federal Bureau of Investigation agents.
All-in-all the case involved nine kilos of cocaine, guns, vehicle and cash which totaled in value at $1 million.
The federally-funded Southwest Georgia Task Force arrested five men, three from Colquitt County in the operation which took months to complete.
Juan Gabriel Maldonado, 833 Jonah Tillman Road, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute, but there was no amount and no specific dates, and he forfeited ownership of his truck. He stipulated to 2.9 kilos, but under these charges he likely would be faced with up to about five years in federal prison, Defense attorney Rick Collum said. He has yet to be sentenced
An FBI agent had testified in earlier court proceedings that the task force organized undercover buys that implicated the three Colquitt County defendants using information from a confidential source.
“Source 1 and Source 2 were the ones who conspired with my client, Mr. Maldonado,” Collum said.
“He pleaded to superseding information. He did not plea to the indictment,” he said, adding that he doesn’t think he’ll have to testify against anyone else.
In the federal system, Collum said, if the defendant waives indictment on a charge, then he doesn’t have to proceed before a grand jury and can plead guilty to superseding information. That option is far less harmful to Maldonado than the indictment was, Collum said.
“To put it bluntly, I just don’t think the government could have proven what was in the indictment. I think they felt like they had to fish or cut bait, and they decided to this (superseding) information. My client was able to plea to that, because he felt like that was more in tune with what he’d actually done than what the indictment had,” he said.
There were some discrepancies in transcripts translated from Spanish to English, he said.“That could have been a problem at trial for the government. I think the government did a good job in analyzing what their case was, what they could prove and what we were going to be able to do. We negotiated an agreement that everybody could live with,” he said.
Birginio Maldonado Nunes, one of Juan Maldonado’s brothers, pleaded earlier this month to Count Two in the indictment, possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. Sentencing should be within the next two-and-a-half months, a clerk from the Middle District of Georgia federal court said Monday.
The other defendants could be going to trial in August. Oscar Perez, also known as “PeeWee” and “Pelone,” 283 Honey Bear Road, had been apprehended by the FBI Gang Task Force and local drug agents during a drug transaction in March at a convenience store near Regency Village. Agents seized about a pound of powder cocaine and cash. A woman was with Perez, but she was not charged, reports said.
The first undercover buy allegedly directly involving Maldonado, a labor contractor for field workers, was Feb. 21, 2007, at which point a confidential source purchased one kilo of powder cocaine, tested at 80 percent purity on Crosby Road, testimony said. The cocaine cost $20,000.
The confidential source learned of a shipment the defendant was allegedly expecting in June, the testifying agent said, and was with Maldonado when the shipment arrived. The task force raided the home of Maldonado June 18 and seized a cache of nearly a dozen weapons, some with silencers and some with scopes, and more than 700 rounds of ammunition. They found six kilos stashed in a chicken pen at the home of Maldonado’s relative directly across the street, the task force coordinator said.
An additional two kilos had been picked up during a traffic stop allegedly involving Joaquin Vaca Robles of Marietta and Adrian Negron Perez of Smyrna in a vehicle with hidden compartments.