Aug. 20--A former Maple Park man who was found five years ago with $1 million in cash, six pounds of cocaine and evidence he was involved in drug trafficking was sentenced Thursday to 19 years in prison, Kane County prosecutors said.
In a negotiated plea, Fernando Pilar-Lopez agreed to the penitentiary sentence in exchange for admitting guilt to possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, prosecutors said Thursday.
Pilar-Lopez, 41, has been in custody since local police and federal narcotics agents confiscated cash and drugs during an August 2010 raid at his residence in 0-100 block of Meredith Road in Maple Park.
Authorities say they seized more than $1 million in cash, a money counter, banking information and a transactions ledger, and they also recovered 2,800 grams of cocaine. The cocaine had a street value of more than $250,000, police said in 2010.
A month before the raid, federal agents had allegedly intercepted a postal package in Phoenix that they said contained almost 900 grams of heroin. The package was addressed to a post office box in DeKalb, which authorities say they were able to link to Pilar-Lopez.
The investigation revealed that Pilar-Lopez had made arrangements to have the heroin, which authorities say was worth about $600,000, shipped to DeKalb, prosecutors said.
Pilar-Lopez, who had been held in lieu of $15 million bail, will receive credit for the almost five years he has spent in the Kane County jail awaiting trial. Judge James Hallock accepted the plea deal, prosecutors said.
