Santa Ana : Brothers Sentenced for Roles in Drug Cartel

A judge this week sent two Costa Mesa brothers to prison for helping run what prosecutors described as one of the biggest marijuana businesses in the country.

Daniel Mack Fowlie, 30, received a 3 1/2-year sentence from Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler in U.S. District Court on Monday, while brother Gus got two years. Each had pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to import and distribute marijuana, while other drug counts against them were dropped.

The sentence was slightly less than had been sought by federal prosecutors, but Assistant U.S. Atty. Tom Umberg termed it “a just sentence.”

“They weren’t the organizers of the conspiracy, but they were cogs in the drug-running business,” Umberg said.

The brothers were accused of having helped distribute hundreds of thousands of pounds of marijuana--worth millions of dollars--around the country, using a sprawling ranch in Rancho del Rio at the borders of Orange and Riverside counties as a base. The ranch was seized by federal authorities last year and was used by President Bush as a stage for an anti-drug speech this spring.

Daniel J. Fowlie, father of the defendants and the alleged mastermind of the family drug business, is in Mexico awaiting extradition to the United States on separate drug charges, Umberg said.