Man admits to delivering cocaine

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Updated: March 23, 2012 8:17AM

An Illinois man will plead guilty to possessing more than 4 pounds of cocaine and being in the country illegally after federal officials caught him trafficking drugs in October on Burr Street in Gary.

According to a plea agreement filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in Hammond, Juan Sanchez, 42, of Melrose Park, Ill., faces a minimum of five years in prison and up to 40 years on the drug charge. A probable cause affidavit filed last fall claimed that a confidential informant for High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area in Lake County set up a meeting with Sanchez on Oct. 14 to buy 2 kilograms of cocaine. The two met at the TA Truck Stop on Burr just off of Interstate 80/94, where federal officials watched Sanchez drive up around 3 p.m., according to the affidavit.

The two drove in Sanchez’s car around the building and started rummaging around in Sanchez’s trunk. Officers then approached and discovered the drugs wrapped in a white cloth laying on the ground by Sanchez and the informant. They found another 265 grams of cocaine in the trunk, the affidavit said. Sanchez told officials after he was arrested that someone by the name of Chaparro from Berwyn, Ill., had paid him $300 for each kilogram of drugs he delivered that day. The affidavit said he had delivered drugs for Chaparro for several weeks and was scheduled to make another stop that day.

An information charging Sanchez with the crimes, which was also filed Tuesday, says that Sanchez has already been convicted of a drug offense and was deported from the country in 2007.