Patel gets 7 years for selling meth ingredients
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The defendant, Sam Patel, 49, was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison with an additional four years to be spent on supervised release for distribution of products to produce meth and maintaining a structure for the production of meth. He must also pay a $1,000 fine.
Patel has been in custody since entering guilty pleas to the two felony counts in January. He could have faced up to 50 years in prison for the crimes. However, the arrest marked his first serious trouble with the law, aside from selling beer to minors.
Patel, who owned a chain of convenience stores in Warren County including Hillis? Market on Old Smithville Road, was arrested last year after he sold pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in the production of meth, to undercover officers. Lawmen said Patel was selling the items in bulk as the store owner sold to agents on eight occasions, selling bulk amounts out of his home and businesses.
Patel was the third area businessman arrested for selling meth-making materials. Prior convictions for the crime included a 14-year sentence for Par Four Market owner Harry Javaherpour of Coffee County and a 21-year sentence for Lester Land and three-year term for Gary Dodson who operated out of a market on Beersheba Street.
With Patel?s sentence, District Attorney General Dale Potter said a new law putting ephedrine-type products behind pharmacy counters has cut into wholesale trafficking of the vital ingredient.
?What was happening is some store owners were getting greedy, trying to make that extra dollar,? Potter said. ?But now it?s harder to do because of the new restrictions.?
Potter said most ephedrine is getting into the hands of meth-makers now by smuggling the ingredients from nearby states which do not have tough laws concerning the sale of ephedrine.