Man gets prison in meth case

A man will spend more than five years in prison in connection to a drug case.

On Monday, Judge N. Randy Smith of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, acting as U.S. District Court judge, sentenced Mexican national Julian Vega-Valdez, 25, to 70 months in prison for distributing five grams or more of actual methamphetamine.

Vega-Valdez pleaded guilty in August.

He admitted that in January 2011, he met with co-defendant Josue Rodriguez-Sanchez in Idaho Falls and provided him with more than 5 grams of methamphetamine to distribute to others.

Rodriguez-Sanchez, of Idaho Falls, and Fernando Garcia, of Logan, Utah, got prison sentences in December 2013 in connection to the case.

The charges come from the efforts of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, which includes various local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Idaho said.