Man sentenced for smuggling pills Dominican Republic native, caught with fake oxycodone, gets six months

BANGOR – A Lawrence, Mass., man was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Bangor to six months in prison for smuggling 2,999 fake oxycodone pills into the U.S. from Canada.

Damaso A. Sanchez, 30, a native of the Dominican Republic, planned to pass the pills off as oxycodone when he sold them in Massachusetts, according to court documents.

Sanchez faced up to three years in prison, but under the federal guidelines range, the recommended sentence was zero to six months in prison.

Because oxycodone is classified as a narcotic, smuggling it into the U.S. carries a much stiffer sentence than the diazepam Sanchez pleaded guilty to bringing across the border illegally. Diazepam, also known as Valium, is classified as a scheduled drug but is not a narcotic.

Sanchez, who has been held without bail since his arrest on April 19, originally was charged with illegally bringing oxycodone into the country. The pills were made to look like oxycodone pills manufactured in Canada, according to court documents. If the pills had been the real deal, Sanchez would have faced between eight and 10 years in federal prison.

U.S. District Judge John Woodcock also sentenced Sanchez to one year of supervised release to be served after he completes his sentence later this month. Sanchez, however, is not expected to be released but to be turned over to immigration officials for deportation.

Sanchez was arrested after he and Geraldo Pineda-Sanch, 28, of Methuen, Mass., were stopped at a Border Patrol immigration checkpoint on April 19 in the southbound lanes of Interstate 95 in Sherman. Sanchez was a passenger in Pineda-Sanch’s car.

When agents searched the car, they found the bag of pills nestled in some shirts that were in a plastic shopping bag hidden inside a large speaker in the back of the car. Sanchez admitted that the pills were his and the driver did not know he had hidden them.

Pineda-Sanch, a native of the Dominican Republic, gave agents a false name and said he was from Puerto Rico, according to court documents. He failed to show up for an immigration hearing in 2001 and was ordered removed from the country when he was found.

He pleaded guilty in May to making a false statement to border agents and was sentenced in August by Woodcock to 108 days or time served. Pineda-Sanch was turned over to immigration officials for deportation, according to court documents.