NEWPORT BEACH : Marijuana Smuggler Gets 10-Year Term

A Newport Beach man who pleaded guilty to charges involving a marijuana smuggling ring was sentenced Monday in to 10 years in federal prison and fined $250,000, authorities announced.

Gerald L. Carroll, 48, pleaded guilty in February to conspiracy, failure to report a foreign bank account and income tax evasion, according to Assistant U.S. Atty. Stephen G. Wolfe, who prosecuted the case in U.S. District Court in San Diego. Carroll was indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles in 1988.

Carroll also pleaded guilty to one count stemming from a Detroit indictment charging him with running a continuing criminal enterprise, Wolfe said.

Carroll, by his guilty plea, admitted to organizing and leading a major marijuana-smuggling operation from 1976 until December, 1982, Wolfe said.

Carroll ran a smuggling operation from Michigan and California that moved about 100,000 pounds of marijuana from Colombia to Midwestern states, the prosecutor said.

In 1985, before his indictment, Carroll allegedly fled the United States for the Cayman Islands and then Mexico, Wolfe said. Carroll was arrested by U.S. marshals in San Diego in August, 1990, Wolfe said.

The federal grand jury in Los Angeles also indicted Fred De Luca Jr., 61, of Calabasas and Edward Solomon, age unknown, of the Cayman Islands.

De Luca pleaded guilty to failure to report a foreign bank account and submitting a fake tax return, Wolfe said. De Luca spent six months in prison and has not yet completed his five-year probation period.

Solomon remains a fugitive, Wolfe said.