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Soriano sentenced one year for pot conspiracyBy FRANK BROWNELL Citizen ReporterA former Monroe County employee, Lionel Soriano, 64, c * Perrine, Florida, Monday entered a guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to import marijuana in connection with the Aug. 4, 1984, seizure of nearly 30,000 pounds of the illegal weed, and was sentenced to one year in prison and four years on probation by Duval County Circuit Court Judge R. Hudson Olliff.Soriano became the sixth person to either be found guilty or enter a guilty plea in the case, including Key Wester Jose Cabaleiro, who on Oct. 3was sentenced to three years in prison in connection with the same case, following his (Cabaleiro’s) Aug. 1 plea to the same offense of conspiracy to import marijuana.According to Florida Dept, of Law Enforcement Agent Paul Fuentes of Jacksonville, Soriano was arrested in the case after the Jacksonville-registered boat the Capt. James L. was intercepted by U.S. Coast Guard officials in the Yucatan Channel inAugust of 1984, and was found to contain about 15 tons of marijuana.According to Fuentes, the five people who entered guilty pleas in the case were sentenced to relatively short terms ranging up to three years in prison with $20,000 fines, but the one person who went to trial in the case, Roberto Martin, and was later convicted by a jury, was later sentenced to 25 years in prison and a $200,000 fine.Recently, Soriano was also on trial for marijuana-related charges in U.S. District Court in Kev West, but government attorneys dropped their case against Soriano during the trial, with only one defendant in this federal case, Carl “Fritz” Fredericks, remaining to face trial, and later found guilty of two counts.However, as the two cases in which Soriano was named as a defendant were totally unrelated, the dropping of the charges against him in the federal court case left the man still facing the state charges against him in Jacksonville.
Newspaper Details
Key West Citizen
Key West, Florida, US
Wed, Oct 22, 1986
Page 8
Full Page
Clipped by
Donna R.
USA 12 Feb 2019
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