A distributor for a Mexico-based illegal drug-trafficking organization was sentenced Thursday in Portland to just over 11 years in prison.
Rodrigo Lopez-Diaz , 53, was the target of a long-term wiretap investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. He had three prior drug convictions in Oregon.
A confidential informant set up a drug buy, ordering methamphetamine from Lopez-Diaz by text message in January 2021. The informant obtained more than one pound of the drug from Lopez-Diaz in Portland for $3,300, according to a criminal affidavit.
Two months later, investigators executed a search warrant at Lopez-Diaz’s Gresham apartment on Southeast 190th Avenue. They seized more than five pounds of methamphetamine, four pounds of heroin and about eight pounds of counterfeit oxycodone pills containing fentanyl, as well as $30,000 in cash, an assault-style rifle and a handgun and ammunition, according to a federal affidavit.
Lopez-Diaz previously had been deported from the United States twice but returned, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Ho.
The prosecutor urged a sentence of 11 years and three months. Lopez-Diaz’s defense lawyer Steven A. Seiden argued for a 10-year-and-one-month sentence.
“The difficulty for me is you’ve been doing this for 20 years,” U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut told Lopez-Diaz.
Having an assault-style rifle when trafficking in such high volumes of drugs that are killing young people deserves a significant sentence, the judge said.
Seiden said his client suffers from substance abuse and has significant health problems after having contracted COVID-19 three times while in custody.
In a letter to the judge read by his lawyer, Lopez-Diaz apologized to his family, to his children whose high-school graduation he’ll now miss and to his 95-year-old mother. “I regret every bad decision I made while I was drinking and using drugs,” he said.
While Lopez-Diaz may be remorseful now, Immergut said he hasn’t shown it in the last two decades, having chosen to return to the United States after two prior convictions for illegally re-entering the country.
“You have not learned from those events,” the judge said. “I’m sympathetic to the pain your loved ones feel, but you are responsible for that pain.”
— Maxine Bernstein
Email mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212
Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian
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