News Release
U.S. Department of Justice
United States Attorney
District of Rhode Island

October 23, 2009

Mailed kilogram package of cocaine results
in a five-year prison sentence

            A federal judge has sentenced Marcos Castro Daly, 30, formerly of San Juan, Puerto Rico, to 60 months in federal prison for taking shipment of a kilogram package of cocaine that had been mailed from San Juan to an address in Providence.
            United States Attorney Peter F. Neronha announced the sentence, which Chief U.S. District Court Judge Mary M. Lisi imposed yesterday in U.S. District Court, Providence.
            In July, Castro pleaded guilty to possessing with intent to distribute more than 500 grams of cocaine.  At the plea hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth P. Madden said the government could prove that, in January 2009, Postal Inspectors and agents of the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force examined an Express Mail package at the Providence Post Office that had originated in San Juan, and determined that it contained about a kilogram of cocaine.
            The intended address was on Yale Avenue but a letter carrier assigned to that route said he was not familiar with the name of the addressee at that address. 
            A Postal Inspector, posing undercover as a letter carrier, drove a postal truck to the Yale Avenue address, where Castro answered the door, claimed the addressee was in the hospital, that he was her roommate, and that he would take delivery of the package.  The Postal Inspector retrieved the package from the truck and gave it to Castro.  When Castro signed for the package, agents arrested him.
            Castro later told agents that he had flown from Puerto Rico to take delivery of the package and was to have been paid $2,000.  His instructions were to go to the Yale Avenue address, retrieve a key from a mail box, wait for the package, and leave it on the front porch.   

Contact: 401-709-5032
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