A Rural Hall man was convicted Monday for his role in trafficking large amounts of LSD, a hallucinatory drug. Authorities previously said he and four co-defendants trafficked the drug so that it could be sold to high school and middle school students in Davie and Forsyth counties.
Marco Sevilla-Hernandez, 23, pleaded guilty to one count of trafficking more than 500 grams of LSD and one count of selling LSD.
Judge David Hall of Forsyth Superior Court sentenced Sevilla-Hernandez to a minimum of five years, 10 months or a maximum seven years, 9 months in prison. Hall also gave Sevilla-Hernandez a suspended sentence of one to two years and placed him on two years of supervised probation. As part of the plea deal, John Bandle, an assistant district attorney for Davie County, voluntarily dismissed about 14 counts of drug trafficking and one count of conspiracy to traffic in LSD.
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Sevilla-Hernandez is the fourth man convicted after a months-long investigation by multiple law-enforcement agencies, including the now-defunct Mocksville Police Department and the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office.
According to findings filed in the case, the investigation started in the fall of 2018. Then-Detective Larry “Matt” Leonard of the Mocksville Police Department learned that someone was selling LSD in and around Mocksville.
Leonard went undercover and identified Christopher Dustin Owens as a mid-level LSD dealer who was operating in Lancaster, S.C. On Jan. 4, 2019, Owens was arrested as part of what law-enforcement called Operation Electric Kool-Aid, according to court documents. When Owens was arrested, law-enforcement officers didn’t know exactly where the LSD was coming from, court documents said.
Owens agreed to point law-enforcement officers in the right direction. He provided hours of recorded testimony that led law enforcement officers to the manufacturer of the LSD. Owens told investigators how often he sold LSD and the “nature of the LSD sales that occurred to individuals down the distribution chain,” court papers said.
The investigation led to Ronald Williams, a Colorado man, who was identified as the source of the drug. According to Owens, Williams shipped LSD from Colorado to South Carolina. Owens would pick up the LSD and sell it to Sevilla-Hernandez.
The prosecution said Detective Leonard bought LSD from Sevilla-Hernandez several times. On Jan. 4, 2019, Leonard bought a large amount of LSD from Sevilla-Hernandez, who told Leonard to bring the money to his house and that Sevilla-Hernandez would travel to South Carolina to pick up the LSD, according to an affidavit for a search warrant. Leonard said he ultimately bought 2,900 “dosage units” of LSD from Sevilla-Hernandez.
Chris Clifton, Sevilla-Hernandez’s attorney, said Sevilla-Hernandez did not cooperate with law enforcement agencies but simply wanted to take responsibility for his role in the LSD ring. He said his client used and sold drugs as a way to buy drugs for himself.
Williams pleaded guilty in December 2020 to one count of conspiracy to traffic in LSD and was sentenced to a minimum five years, 10 months in prison.
Owens pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to traffic in LSD and was sentenced to a minimum of four years in prison.
Another co-defendant, Branden Hall, pleaded guilty to one count of trafficking LSD and was sentenced to a minimum 2 years, 9 months in prison.
Charges are pending against Dylan Tyler Beck of Mount Airy.