One of the three suspects in the shipment of 4.9 lbs of methamphetamine or \u201cice\u201d worth $850,000 has signed a plea agreement with the U.S. government.<\/p>\n
Assistant U.S. attorney Garth R. Backe informed the U.S. District Court for the NMI yesterday that the U.S. government and defendant Xi Huang have signed a plea agreement.<\/p>\n
The plea deal was filed in court under seal yesterday.<\/p>\n
Backe requested the court to set the case for a change of plea hearing for today, Wednesday, at 1:30pm.<\/p>\n
The court granted the U.S. government\u2019s request for change of plea hearing.<\/p>\n
An indictment charged Huang, Shicheng Cai, and Zhaopeng Chen with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine. The indictment includes a criminal forfeiture allegation.<\/p>\n
According to the indictment, the three defendants, all Chinese nationals, conspired between Nov. 30 and Dec. 4, 2015, to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine.<\/p>\n
Last Dec. 10, U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona granted the U.S. government\u2019s motion to detain the defendants pending trial after determining that they are a flight risk.<\/p>\n
Manglona said the evidence suggests that Huang was the leader of the group.<\/p>\n
A routine Customs inspection at the Port of Saipan of a 40-foot container from Guangzhou, China, resulted in the discovery of the 4.9 lbs of \u201cice\u201d hidden in three plastic bags in one of the nine 5-gallon paint containers last Dec. 2.<\/p>\n
Joint federal and local enforcers investigated the discovery of the \u201cice\u201d that led to the arrest of Huang, Cai, and Chen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the three suspects in the shipment of 4.9 lbs of methamphetamine or \u201cice\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[93,8632,8656,8657],"class_list":["post-222619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-district-court","tag-shicheng-cai","tag-xi-huang","tag-zhaopeng-chen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}