O.C. Lawyer Gets 10 Years in Drug Case : Crime: The Tustin attorney was convicted of nine narcotics and money-laundering charges for helping a major marijuana-smuggling ring.

An Orange County lawyer involved in a drug ring that shipped tons of marijuana to the West Coast from Southeast Asia was sentenced Friday to 10 years in federal prison.

U.S. District Judge Consuelo Marshall imposed the sentence on Neal Carl Pearson, 52, who, through his Tustin law office, assembled a phony partnership using the names of dead people to launder funds for the narcotics ring, the largest known operation of its sort.

Pearson was convicted May 22 of nine narcotics and money-laundering charges that involved the funneling of millions of dollars in drug money through the fake partnership--Ahern Associates--as well as bank accounts and real estate investments.

Pearson was portrayed by prosecutors as “the right-hand man” of the ring’s leader, William Uhler, but he was characterized by the defense as Uhler’s pawn.

Uhler was convicted of 17 counts of drug trafficking in a separate trial and was sentenced a week ago to 24 years and four months in prison.

During his trial, Pearson, also a former probation officer, testified that he met Uhler through Uhler’s family, which housed juvenile offenders as part of a California Youth Authority program.

Between 1984 and 1988, the drug ring smuggled tons of marijuana from Southeast Asia to the West Coast aboard ships. Prosecutors said the multimillion-dollar smuggling network was the largest that federal agents ever uncovered involving marijuana brought from Thailand and other countries in the region.

Pearson made frequent trips to Southeast Asia between 1985 and 1987, met smuggling crews in Tahiti, and was charged with securing boats for smuggling operations, Assistant U.S. Atty. Steven Clymer said.

Pearson is expected to lose his law license as a result of the conviction.

Pearson and Uhler were indicted in April, 1989, with 11 other defendants, several of whom pleaded guilty and cooperated in the government’s investigation against the ring’s leaders.

The charges against the defendants stem from multi-ton loads of marijuana shipped by distributors through the Gulf of Thailand. Some of the shipments were sent to Hawaii, where Uhler allegedly had one of the boats blown up to avoid having its cargo detected by drug agents.

At his sentencing hearing last week, Uhler told the judge that he first began using marijuana in the 1960s in a quest for spiritual enlightenment.