Attorney Convicted of Attempting to Import Cocaine From Bolivia

A Marina del Rey attorney was convicted Friday of attempting to import 1,100 pounds of cocaine from Bolivia in a scheme that went sour with a military crackdown on clandestine cocaine labs in the jungles of Bolivia.

A federal court jury convicted John Robert Malpezzi, a lawyer who specializes in drug defense cases, and two others in a plan their attorneys claimed was orchestrated--and indirectly thwarted--by the U.S. government.

Malpezzi, 36, was accused of approaching a government informant about flying to Bolivia to pick up $14.5 million worth of cocaine, promising protection from a man he introduced as the Bolivian minister of the interior.

During a 31-day trial in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, government prosecutors presented evidence that the informant, Ferris Ashley, arranged a series of meetings between Malpezzi, his partners, and federal drug agents posing as a pilot and crew members to work out details of the transaction.

Phony Investment Firm

Ashley traveled to the Bolivian jungle with Malpezzi and two co-defendants to view the laboratory from which the cocaine was to come. When Malpezzi said he would need investors to come up with the $4 million needed to buy the drug, government agents set up a phony investment company as a front and made arrangements to deposit $4 million in one of its accounts as collateral for the purchase.

On June 23, Drug Enforcement Administration agents flew to Bolivia and finalized details for the delivery, but the delivery at Santa Cruz airport never took place.

According to Asst. U.S. Atty. Enrique Romero, the Bolivian military, assisted by U.S. troops, had initiated a joint operation to ferret out cocaine laboratory sites in Bolivia, and the airport where the transfer was to have taken place was filled with government troops.

Deceptive Tactics Scored

“I think it stinks,” Malpezzi’s attorney, John Yzurdiaga, said of the jury’s verdict, reached after several days of deliberations.

“I think it authenticates the use of deceptive, manipulative people that can orchestrate and create crime,” he said of the informant’s role in the case.

Malpezzi and co-defendant Jose Luis Leon, a Los Angeles bail bondsman also convicted Friday, “never had the capability of putting the deal together,” Yzurdiaga said. “Without the involvement of our government, these guys could never have put a deal together. They didn’t know how to, they didn’t have the wherewithal, and yet they’re being prosecuted.”

Malpezzi was convicted on a total of five counts involving conspiracy to import the cocaine and distribution of an additional kilogram of the drug supplied to the informant to finance his travel to Bolivia. Leon was convicted on three similar counts, and Hugo Leigue Canamari, a Bolivian national, was convicted on one count of conspiracy.

Richard Raymond Annigoni, a licensed pilot and real estate entrepreneur from Huntington Beach accused of wiring $2,000 in expense money to the informant and verifying the piloting credentials of an undercover DEA agent, was acquitted.

The jury indicated it would continue deliberating Monday on a fifth defendant, Damazo Adolfo Delgado Mercado, who allegedly made financial arrangements for the transaction. Romulo Rojas Goot, a Bolivian who had falsely claimed to be the Bolivian interior minister, is still a fugitive.

Defense attorneys said they would move for a new trial during a sentencing hearing scheduled for June 1.