The Region - News from Nov. 6, 1986

The 1984 convictions of Alan Charles Mobley and nine other members of an Orange County cocaine ring, described by federal prosecutors as the largest drug network ever dismantled on the West Coast, were affirmed by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Mobley, 26, a former student orator at Fullerton High School, was sentenced to 45 years in prison as the ringleader of the drug distribution network. He and the nine other members of the ring had entered conditional guilty pleas, reserving the right to challenge the validity of FBI wiretaps which led to their arrests. In upholding the convictions, the appeals court ruled that the FBI needed to use wiretaps, rather than informants, in breaking up the ring.