MOBILE, AL- The Acting United States Attorney, Steve Butler, announces that Graciela Mora-Demoran was sentenced in United States District Court, Senior Judge Callie V. Granade, on April 24, 2017 to fifty-one months confinement for trafficking in methamphetamine and cocaine. The sentence was structured to give the defendant credit for twenty one months already spent in state custody.
On Aug. 20, 2015, an Alabama State Trooper stopped Mora-Demoran on I-10 in Baldwin County, Alabama. Later during the stop, K-9 “Justice" gave a positive alert to the odor of narcotics on the defendant’s vehicle and a search of the vehicle was conducted. In the cargo area of the vehicle, there were various types of Mexican food products and soft drinks. A State Trooper opened a bag containing several bottles of purported soft drink and picked up a bottle and noticed white debris floating around inside the bottle. The State Trooper noticed that the bottle picked up was not tight with pressure as when factory sealed, was filled up to the very top, and did not show any carbonation when shaken.
Aware of current trafficking trends of methamphetamines in liquid form, the bottle of soda was tested at the roadside for the presence of narcotics with a narcotics test kit. The liquid from the bottles of soda tested positive for the presence of narcotics (methamphetamines). Laboratory testing revealed that the lemonade soda containers contained 126.4 g of methamphetamine (mixture and substance) at a purity level of
56.6 % resulting in 71.5 grams of pure methamphetamine. Ginger ale bottles contained 130.3 g of methamphetamine (mixture and substance) at a purity level of 57.9 % resulting in 75.4 grams of pure methamphetamine.
Officers also discovered numerous cone shaped containers in the vehicle that contained suspected narcotics. Further testing of the cone shaped containers revealed that they contained 7.9 kilograms of cocaine.
The case was jointly investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency. Assistant United States Attorney George May prosecuted the case.
Acting United States Attorney Steve Butler stated he “appreciates and praises the efforts of the alert State Troopers who were dedicated in keeping up with the drug trafficking trends and able to foil a very clandestine manner of transporting narcotics".
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
