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In the beginning, Monica Valencia was just a grateful medical marijuana patient helping out with chores and errands at her local dispensary…but after she got hit with federal charges for her assistance, she stood alone in courageously refusing to testify against the dispensary’s operators. For a time, the California Healthcare Collective was the only medical marijuana dispensary open in the state’s Central Valley area, giving operators Luke Scarmazzo and Ricardo Montes a booming business. That all changed in September 2006, when a federal raid closed the facility down and left nine people indicted on federal charges. For her part, Monica faced a long list of felony counts, including money laundering, aiding and abetting, and conspiracy to distribute marijuana. She pled guilty to the latter charge, but she could not be convinced to testify against the former operators. Six of her co-defendants succumbed to this temptation in order to get better plea deals, and most of the government’s witnesses are expected to avoid prison time altogether. Monica, however, faces up to 20 years of incarceration and a million dollars in fines at sentencing. In the meantime, she has been taken into custody for violating the terms of her supervised release, which was easy to do – Judge Lawrence O’Neill declared that her bail rules were the strictest he’d ever issued to a defendant.
Monica has completed her jail time and is out on supervised release. |
Monica Valencia
