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Cook gets 5 years in prison for ‘ice’ possession
A restaurant cook who is allegedly a major supplier of methamphetamine or “ice” on Saipan pleaded guilty last week as part of a plea deal and was slapped with a five-year prison sentence.
Xiongying Xu, 48, a Chinese national, pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a controlled substance.
Xu got credit for time served since his arrest last June 25, 2016, and was ordered to pay a $2,000 fine.
The Office of the Attorney General originally charged him with two counts of trafficking of a controlled substance, and two counts of illegal possession of a controlled substance.
Assistant attorney general J. Robert Glass Jr. later amended the charges to only a count of illegal possession of a controlled substance.
Glass said it is in the best interest of the Commonwealth to drop the other charges in view of Xu’s potential future cooperation with the OAG and Department of Public Safety and after careful review of the evidence and additional investigation conducted by the OAG.
A “cooperating defendant” of the CNMI Drug Enforcement Task Force Office managed to buy 7 gross grams and 10.6 gross grams of “ice” from Xu during a buy-bust operation last June 25.
It was the “cooperating defendant” who allegedly revealed Xu’s drug activities.
