Mother of five drivers from California to JP to collect fentanyl and deliver it to Dorchester, gets arrested and sentenced to almost five years in prison

A Burbank, Calif. woman who drove to Jamaica Plain for a job picking up 4 1/2 pounds of fentanyl and delivering it to a buyer in Dorchester last September was sentenced Monday to 4 years and 9 months in federal prison this week.

The buyer was actually an undercover DEA agent.

US District Court Judge Mark Wolf imposed the sentence on Adelaida Yudit Garibay, 46. She had pleaded guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute 400 grams or more of fentanyl in June.

The sentence was lower than that recommended by the US Attorney’s office, but higher than that requested by Garibay’s attorney.

Garibay, who was convicted of similar drug mule charges involving marijuana, when she was 20 and again when she was 21, worked for the real drug dealer, whom an informant had alerted the DEA, according to documents filed by a DEA agent. on the case and the prosecutor. This woman, and another Garibay also encountered at Jamaica Plain, were not identified in documents filed by Garibay.

According to a DEA agent affidavit, an agent posing as a drug buyer contacted the dealer and arranged to buy two kilos of fentanyl for $82,000, to be delivered to him at the South Bay Mall in Dorchester. . This woman in turn contacted Garibay, who traveled to Boston to act as a courier for the approximately 3 1/2 mile trip from Jamaica Plain to the mall.

On the evening of September 29, the agent arrived at the mall and spoke on the phone with Garibay, who initially tried to convince him to meet at Washington and McBride streets in Jamaica Plain, near where was the drinking fountain. But the officer wouldn’t go there and she agreed to bring the drugs to him, especially outside the South Bay Home Depot.

Investigators then moved to the Washington Street and McBride Street area. At approximately 8:52 p.m., investigators observed a Hispanic woman talking on her cell phone outside Planet Fitness located at 3525 Washington Street – this woman was later determined to be GARIBAY. Shortly after, investigators observed GARIBAY walking towards the corner of Washington Street and Burnett Street, where she encountered a second woman. The two women then began to walk down Burnett Street. A plainclothes Boston detective followed the two women and saw them standing in a dark corner of Burnett Street. There, a third woman arrived on foot and handed a dark colored shopping bag to GARIBAY. The three women then left in different directions.

Garibay then ordered an Uber, which investigators followed to Dorchester, the affidavit continues.

Shortly after, Boston police, in a marked vehicle, conducted a traffic stop of the Uber vehicle in Dorchester. The woman standing in front of Planet Fitness was seated in the rear passenger seat and was identified as Adelaida Yudit GARIBAY. The investigators ask GARIBAY to get out of the vehicle. Investigators saw a dark colored shopping bag on the floor where GARIBAY was sitting. The bag was open to view and officers saw two packages inside. The packages were wrapped in clear plastic and green cellophane with a beige powdery substance visible. Based on officers’ training and experience, they believed the packages contained approximately 2 kilograms of fentanyl. GARIBAY denied that the bag was his. The investigators then arrested GARIBAY.

Later in the evening, the investigators carried out a field test of the substance contained in the packages seized at the feet of GARIBAY. The substance tested positive for fentanyl.

At the time of his arrest, GARIBAY had several cell phones. Officers asked UC to call the phone numbers he used to converse with the woman who was looking to sell fentanyl. When the CU did so, one of GARIBAY’s cell phones rang/buzzed in the presence of the officers. Based on my training and experience, I believe GARIBAY was the same woman UC spoke with to negotiate the fentanyl deal.

Before Wolf sentenced Garibay, his lawyer, Joshua Hanye, requested a 24-month sentence, for a variety of reasons, starting with what he said was his limited role in selling fentanyl.

Ms. Garibay had no role in bringing the drugs to Boston. She was told where to get drugs from women she had never met and where to take them to a buyer she had never met. Although she had some knowledge of the other participants in the crime, her knowledge was limited. She did not plan or organize the offense, but voluntarily participated, including driving from California to Boston. She also expected to be paid for her participation, but much less than what the other participants would have received.

But also, Garibay has admitted her mistake, pleading guilty, and has the support of a loving family of her husband and five children, whom she nurtured for more than two decades before she made a really stupid mistake and to agree to take a job as a drug. courier, he wrote, noting “the crossroads” she found herself in as a young mother of two, fresh out of a ten-month sentence as a marijuana courier in 1998:

At this point, at 21, with two young children and barely out of prison, Adelaida Garibay’s life was clearly at a crossroads. Many forces would have pushed her back into crime in a short-sighted attempt to earn money to support her family. Yet she chose not to. For the next 24 years, she held demanding jobs, supported her family, and upheld the law. Such a change would not have happened without hard work. …

Ms Garibay has already demonstrated her ability to turn her life around in much more difficult circumstances when she was a young mother fresh out of prison. Now she will be serving a much longer sentence, but she will have a support network waiting for her. This support network is additional support for a downward deviation because a guidelines sentence is not necessary to achieve the goals of sentencing, including deterrence of future criminal behavior.

He added that she should receive a lesser sentence because of the many ailments she suffers from, including chronic back pain that required surgery, high cholesterol, pre-diabetes and obesity.

In contrast, Assistant US Attorney Samuel Feldman sought a nearly six-year sentence, saying she was not “a naive person doing someone a favour”, but someone who walked 3,000 miles to deliver 2 kilos of an illegal and potentially deadly drug – and that her past convictions were enough to make her “well equipped to understand
what it means to carry narcotics.”

Further, Feldman wrote that she “argued” with the buyer/DEA agent about the logistics of the drug exchange: “Defendant may not have conceived the idea to sell drugs in Massachusetts, but she was involved in coordinating and executing it.”

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