A Honduran man extradited to the U.S. to face fentanyl trafficking charges was sentenced Wednesday to five years in federal prison for selling the powerful opioid in the Bay Area, federal prosecutors said.
Javier Marin-Gonzales, 26, was given a total of 60 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to distributing 40 grams or more of fentanyl, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California said in a statement.
Marin-Gonzales was indicted by a federal grand jury in August 2023 on charges that he sold fentanyl on three occasions in 2022. Prosecutors said he sold a total of about 690 grams of the drug to a buyer at several locations in the East Bay. Authorities said Marin-Gonzales began selling fentanyl in the Bay Area as early as July 2022 as a way to earn income.
After the indictment, investigators learned that Marin-Gonzales had returned to Honduras. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs worked with Honduran authorities, the FBI and the DEA to find him and secure his arrest and extradition to the United States.
Marin-Gonzales pleaded guilty on Dec. 17 of last year.
Besides the prison sentence, Gilliam ordered him to serve four years of supervised release and pay a $100 special assessment.
Another Honduran, Maxfer Palma, was recently found guilty by a federal jury of drug trafficking and firearms charges after police discovered more than 2 kilograms of illegal drugs in an East Bay apartment where children lived. He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 17.
Why should we paay to keep him in custody? Send him back home…
Deport him when he’s released. Four years of supervised release means
he gets to stay in the US for an extra four years after he’s released from
prison, and we all know ex-cons never re-offend while on supervised release.