Pittsburg: Man sentenced to federal prison for selling 60 lbs of meth to undercover agent

OAKLAND — A Bay Area man was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison for possessing a huge amount of methamphetamine after agreeing to sell it to an undercover agent, according to court records.

Alan Contreras was sentenced in late March and subsequently transferred from Santa Rita Jail in Dublin to the Bureau of Prisons system, court records show. He pleaded guilty to a federal offense of possessing more than 50 grams of methamphetamine for distribution, but authorities say he showed up to a meeting with an undercover federal agent with a duffle bag containing a whopping 60 pounds of the drug.

The sentence was imposed by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.

Contreras also sold more than 1,400 counterfeit painkiller pills to the agent, prosecutors alleged in court records. He was arrested at the final meetup in Pittsburg, in 2021, and charged with a federal offense in July 2022, according to court records.

According to Contreras’ attorney, the meth proceeds would have gone to a good cause: Contreras aspired to fly and needed the money to finish obtaining his pilot’s license.

“His intention was to earn enough money working in the United States to continue his pilot training,” Assistant Federal Public Defender John Paul Reichmuth said in a sentencing memo. “He began working as a gardener in the East Bay with his friend, but his friend also sold drugs. Mr. Contreras began delivering drugs after he struggled to support himself, including his drug habit, financially.”

Reichmuth added that Contreras will be deported to Mexico after he’s freed from prison, further adding to the consequences he faces.

Prosecutors say federal agents learned in March 2021 that Contreras “was a large-scale drug dealer in Northern California and that he was a supplier to street-level dealers in the East Bay.” He allegedly offered to sell an undercover agent 34 pounds of meth early on in their relationship. He later offered to sell the agent 50 pounds, and the two agreed to meet in a Pittsburg parking lot on Aug. 11, 2021, prosecutors said.

“When (Contreras) arrived at that pre-arranged transaction, an associate pulled a duffle bag out of his car and (Contreras) was then placed under arrest,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Abraham Fine wrote in court papers. “A subsequent search of the duffle bag revealed that it contained approximately 60 pounds of methamphetamine.”