A cocaine trafficker was sentenced to six years in prison Tuesday after being duped into calling the feds to recover 13 pounds of cocaine and a gun that had been seized by law enforcement.
The bizarre case against Emmanuel Gutierrez, 33, and his co-defendant, Carlos Gomez, was launched in November 2021, when police stopped a car-carrying truck west of Nashville, Tennessee, because it did not have a visible license plate, according to a complaint against the pair.
Officers searched the cars on the New York-bound truck and discovered the six kilograms of coke along with a handgun stashed in four separate hidden compartments – or “traps” – in a 2011 Nissan Passenger aboard the truck.
After they seized the contraband, federal agents placed a note in one of the traps that had “call me” written in Spanish and the number of a confidential source working with the DEA.
At the direction of the feds, the truck driver then dropped the Nissan off in Uniondale on Long Island, setting the trap, the criminal complaint states.
Three days later, Gutierrez and Gomez called the number and arranged to buy back the drugs and gun from the undercover DEA source at a location in The Bronx.
The pair were arrested when they showed up at the spot.
Both Gutierrez and Gomez pleaded guilty to one narcotics conspiracy count earlier this year.
At his sentencing Tuesday, Gutierrez apologized for his role in the scheme and said his arrest and prosecution has been a “horrible experience.”
“I haven’t been through anything like this before,” said Gutierrez, who has been locked up in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center since his arrest in 2021.
After his spiel, Judge Kevin Castel sentenced Gutierrez to six years in prison – a year longer than the mandatory minimum sentence that both his defense attorney and prosecutors from the Southern District of New York had requested.
“This is not some technical offense,” Castel said before imposing the sentence, noting that the hidden traps in the Nissan were “indicative of active drug trafficking.”
“There’s no indication that this is just a one-off offense,” he added. “It was a carefully planned and orchestrated scheme that would have succeeded but for the license plate hiccup.”
Gomez is set to be sentenced in the case in September.