Truck Driver Sentenced To Over Ten Years Imprisonment For Transporting Marijuana

justice.gov, Oct 02, 2006

Martin Antonio Campa-Corella, 34, of Mexico, was sentenced on September 12 to 121 months imprisonment and 60 months supervised release, by United States District Judge John M. Roll, in Tucson.

On June 1, 2005, the Drug Enforcement Agency arrested Campa after Border Patrol agents discovered 4,293 pounds of marijuana in the tractor-trailer the defendant was driving. The defendant had been stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint on I-19 near Amado, Arizona. The truck contained pallets of tomatoes from the floor to the ceiling near the door of the truck, but behind the boxes of tomatoes agents discovered 183 bundles of marijuana valued between 2 and 3.4 million dollars.

When questioned by agents, the defendant claimed that he was working for a trucking company. Campa further stated that he had looked in the back of the trailer before driving the truck, but he claimed he did not see any marijuana and that he did not notice a difference in the handling of the truck with the extra 4,293 pounds of marijuana. The defendant stated that he intended to deliver the truck to an unknown address, which he purported to belong to a produce company in Phoenix, Arizona. Follow-up investigation revealed that the trucking company did not exist. Further, when agents traced the Arizona Department of Transportation number listed on the truck, the search revealed that the identification number was registered to a church in South Carolina. Read more at justice.gov