Marijuana Dispensary Worker Sentenced To 37 Months
Five Others Also Sentenced
FRESNO, CA - Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent in Charge Anthony D. Williams and United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced that United States District Judge Anthony W. Ishii sentenced Jonathan Michael Chapman, 32, of Bakersfield, today to 37 months in prison for conspiring to distribute and possess with intent to distribute marijuana.
According to court documents, Chapman admitted that between 2005 and July 2007, he worked at Nature’s Medicinal Co-Op, a Bakersfield business engaged almost exclusively in distributing marijuana. In 2007, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration seized a total of more than 85 kilograms of marijuana from the business.
Five other Bakersfield defendants have been sentenced after pleading guilty: Timothy Glenn Doolittle, 42, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and five years of supervised release; Jennifer Diane Brown, 37, was sentenced to a year in prison and three years of supervised release; John Shanks, 62, was sentenced to 20 months in prison and three years of supervised release; Israel Cavazos, 38, was sentenced to 42 months in prison and three years of supervised release; and John Wayne Wyatt, 31, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release. Two other defendants are awaiting trial.
This case is the product of an investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation, the Kern County Sheriff’s Department, the Bakersfield Police Department, and the Southern Tri-County High Intensity Drug Task Force. Assistant United States Attorney Kathleen A. Servatius is prosecuting the case.
