One of the six men suspected of drug trafficking pleaded guilty last Monday.<\/p>\n
Shou Fu Zhang, 33, pleaded guilty during a change of plea hearing last Monday before Superior Court Associate Judge Joseph Camacho. <\/p>\n
Zhang pleaded guilty to a count of illegal possession of controlled substance, which is punishable by up to five years imprisonment, and a fine of over $2000. <\/p>\n
By pleading guilty, Zhang would be sentenced to five years imprisonment with two year suspended. However, the sentence would still be decided at his sentencing hearing set for June 26. <\/p>\n
According to Saipan Tribune archives, Zhang was arrested in November 2019, along with other alleged methamphetamine or \u201cice\u201d traffickers, including Joshua Sablan Diaz, 34; Song Joon Park, 41; Li Hui Shi, 41; Yi Chuan Bai, 33; and In Jun Cho, 38. Each one was arrested in separate CNMI Drug Enforcement Task Force operations. <\/p>\n
In Zhang\u2019s case, DETF said their \u201ccooperating source\u201d managed to buy $600 worth of \u201cice\u201d from Zhang last Oct. 2, 2019, near a store in Chalan Piao.<\/p>\n
In the second operation, the \u201ccooperating source\u201d was able to buy $450 worth of \u201cice\u201d from Zhang last Oct. 16, 2019, near a bank in Garapan.<\/p>\n
In the case of Diaz, a DETF \u201ccooperating source\u201d managed to buy $350 worth of methamphetamine from him at his home in Chalan Kiya on Sept. 23, 2019. That was allegedly repeated last Oct. 5, 2019, when the \u201ccooperating source\u201d bought $100 worth of methamphetamine from Diaz at his home.<\/p>\n
In the case against Park and his girlfriend, Shi, DETF said their \u201ccooperating source\u201d bought $550 worth of \u201cice\u201d from the two during a sting operation last Oct. 25, 2019, at their home in Dandan. The \u201ccooperating source\u201d was allegedly able to buy again $540 worth \u201cice\u201d from the two last Oct. 28, 2019.<\/p>\n
In Bai\u2019s case, DETF said that it was Bai who delivered the drugs to Park and Shi at the Oct. 25 and 28 sting operations.<\/p>\n
In the case against Cho, DETF said their \u201ccooperating source\u201d was able to buy $100 worth of \u201cice\u201d from the defendant at his house in Garapan last Sept. 18, 2019. DETF said the \u201ccooperating source\u201d was again able to buy $100 worth of \u201cice\u201d from Cho at his residence last Nov. 19, 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the six men suspected of drug trafficking pleaded guilty last Monday. Shou Fu…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317411","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}