News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 28, 2003

Worcester Man Sentenced To 15 Years In Prison

Boston, MA….A Worcester man was sentenced yesterday in federal court for distributing crack cocaine.

Mark R. Trouville, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, New England Field Division, James M. Gallagher, Chief of the Worcester Police Department and United States Attorney Michael J. Sullivan, announced today that CHRISTIAN LOPEZ, age 23, of 31 Oxford Street and 181 Austin Street, Worcester, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock to 15 years and 8 months' imprisonment, to be followed by a 5 year term of supervised release. LOPEZ pleaded guilty at an earlier plea hearing to distributing crack cocaine.

As a result of a five-month investigation into the crack cocaine and ecstasy dealing of LOPEZ and his associates, four defendants from Worcester were also convicted and sentenced in hearings before Judge Woodlock held in September, October, and November of 2002. GADIEL RAMOS, age 23, was sentenced to 10 years in prison; JULIO LOPEZ, age 24, was sentenced to 5 years in prison; HECTOR CORTEZ RAMOS, age 20, was sentenced to 4 years in prison; and HERNAN ORTIZ, age 25, was sentenced to 2 years in prison.

At LOPEZ'S plea hearing, the prosecutor told the Court that had the case proceeded to trial the Government's evidence would have proven that LOPEZ and Gadiel Ramos sold 137 grams of crack cocaine to an undercover officer on April 18, 2001 in Waltham. On May 3, Gadiel Ramos and Julio Lopez sold 55 grams of crack cocaine to the undercover officer that LOPEZ was unavailable because he had been incarcerated. In plea and sentencing hearings for LOPEZ's co-defendants, the prosecutor told the Court that on August 2, 2001, the undercover officer purchased 57 grams of crack cocaine from Gadiel Ramos, Julio Lopez, and Hector Cortes Ramos. In addition, on June 6, 2001, Gadiel Ramos and Julio Lopez sold the undercover officer 15 grams of ecstasy supplied by Hernan Ortiz.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Worcester Police Department.