Pair Sentenced in Cocaine Case : 10-Year Terms for Ring Members Who Pleaded Guilty

Nearly a year after federal authorities broke up a far-flung cocaine smuggling network, arresting 59 people in six states and the South Pacific, prosecutors in San Diego bagged guilty pleas Friday from two of the drug ring’s kingpins.

Augustine Fernando Maurtua, a Peruvian living in Carlsbad, and Michael Jay Sullivan, owner of a Del Mar table manufacturing company, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to operating a continuing criminal enterprise. Under plea bargains with federal prosecutors, each will be sentenced to 10 years in prison for the offense--a potent charge reserved for managers of drug smuggling and distribution schemes.

The men, key Southern California operatives of a ring that reached from Colombia and Peru to both coasts of the United States, could have received life sentences had their cases gone to trial. Defense lawyers, however, said the 10-year terms were stiff penalties.

Sullivan faces an additional sentence of up to four years in jail for a felony charge of unlawful use of a telephone in connection with the smuggling activity. Investigators recorded 1,100 hours of conversations on Sullivan’s phone and those of other defendants through court-authorized wiretaps.

Members of both men’s families were snared in the federal investigation, which prosecutors have claimed broke up a ring that imported 25% of all the cocaine smuggled into the United States from Peru.

Maurtua’s brother, Jorge Augustin Maurtua of Ketchum, Idaho, pleaded guilty Friday to a felony charge of destroying drug paraphernalia to avoid its seizure by law enforcement officers. Under terms of his plea bargain, he will be placed on probation.

Sullivan’s sister, Tina Marie Sullivan, also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of possession of cocaine. Prosecutors will recommend that she receive a deferred prosecution, under which the charge would be dismissed if she completes a one-year probation.

All four will be formally sentenced later this spring by U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving.

Court documents describe Michael Sullivan and Augustine Maurtua as the San Diego County distributors for an extensive cocaine ring allegedly run by Jose Omar Orozco of Los Angeles, one of several defendants in the case who remain at large. Prosecutors say the ring operated in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami and Idaho.

As part of their plea agreements, neither Michael Sullivan nor Augustine Maurtua will be called to testify before grand juries investigating drug-related crimes or in the trials of any of the other defendants in the case.

Of the 80 people initially charged in the case, many--described by one prosecutor as the “plankton,” rather than the “whales” and “barracudas” of the investigation--have pleaded guilty to reduced charges.

A handful of cases have been dismissed, 23 defendants have pleaded guilty, and plea bargain offers are pending for 13, according to a summary filed in court Friday by prosecutors. Trials are pending for 15 defendants.