[B]URLINGTON — A former pizza shop owner, who had been described as well-respected in the Winhall community, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role in a scheme to distribute hundreds of pounds of heroin.
U.S. District Court Judge William K. Sessions III said he was “totally perplexed” about what would lead Marco Antonio Lam Peralta to get involved with the conspiracy to import heroin from Guatemala into Vermont. Lam Peralta was accused of delivering packages of the drugs and receiving payments for doing so. He was arrested in March 2016.
Lam Peralta is a legal resident of Vermont but not a U.S. citizen and will be deported to Guatemala after completion of his sentence. He was sentenced Tuesday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Burlington.
Sessions said that the 10-year sentence, which was the mandatory minimum for the crime, was sufficient due to Peralta’s history and the fact that his deportation to Guatemala will likely permanently separate him from his family.
Diego Walther Anibal Mejia Paredes, Lam Peralta’s cousin, has a larger role in the conspiracy and was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for coordinating the distribution of 500 pounds of heroin in the United States.
Lam Peralta had earlier agreed to a plea agreement but later attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing that he was forced to plead guilty by his then-lawyer and that he did not understand the extent of the conspiracy. Sessions ruled in July that Lam Peralta could not withdraw that plea.
The plea set the range of the sentence at 10 to 12½ years in prison. The prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Drescher, argued for a 12½-year sentence.
Drescher said that Lam Peralta had lied on the stand during the hearing on the motion to withdraw the guilty plea and that due to the extraordinary quantity of the drugs, Lam Peralta should have gotten the longer sentence.
The government had messages between Mejia Paredes and Lam Peralta that show Lam Peralta organizing the arrival of drug shipments from Guatemala and the subsequent delivery of those drugs and receipt of payment.
A father of six, Lam Peralta tearfully took the stand during sentencing and said that he moved his family from New York City to Vermont to raise his children away from some of the negatives of city life, including drugs.
“I always stayed away from that and always tried to do the best for myself and family,” he said. “I’ve always had a strong work ethic to work really hard and give back to my community.”
He said that he had served as a soccer coach and had been a positive influence on his children.
Lam Peralta, who moved to the United States when he was 14 and has lived here since, said he was taken advantage of by his cousin.
Drescher acknowledged that Lam Peralta’s deportation and separation from his family make his punishment severe. But he asked Sessions to consider the impact the distribution of the heroin had on others.
“It’s impossible to estimate the amount of misery and sadness that that quantity imposed on New England,” he said.
In explaining the sentence, Sessions said that Lam Peralta was not an organizer of the conspiracy, was not involved from the start and was only involved for a short time before his arrest. But, he said, Lam Peralta had engaged in a very serious criminal offense.
“I have never seen a case involving such a large quantity of heroin,” Sessions said.
Mark Kaplan, Lam Peralta’s attorney, argued during the hearing that there were several mitigating factors relevant to his client. For example, Kaplan said, Lam Peralta had no criminal record before his arrest and was not involved in the conspiracy for a substantial amount of time.
Kaplan said that his client would likely appeal the earlier decision to bar withdrawal of his guilty plea.
