OAKLAND — An East Bay man was sentenced to three years in federal prison and a three-year supervised release term for robbing a federal informant who was investigating him for suspected gun trafficking.
Jose Garcia-Lopez, 22, of Oakland, was sentenced last month by U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, after pleading guilty to a robbery charge. According to prosecutors, the robbery occurred on March 15, 2023, when the informant arranged to buy guns from Garcia-Lopez and his co-defendant, Samuel Valencia-Gonzalez, for $950.
Valencia-Gonzalez put a gun to the informant’s head and took $950 plus an additional $500 in money that had been provided to the informant by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, court records show. Charges against Valencia-Gonzalez are still pending.
Related Articles
East Bay man charged with machete murder, burning victim’s body in failed cover-up attempt
East Bay man gets 3 1/2 years in federal prison for selling counterfeit electronics to military
Disgraced former Fremont city manager kicked out of government association
Oakland police ID teen killed in shooting falsely reported as San Francisco homicide
East Bay man charged with sexual assault spree: Police say he raped pregnant woman, attacked two others
One of the guns that the informant had arranged to buy had been reported stolen from a car in Newark, prosecutors said.
Garcia-Lopez’s lawyer, Assistant Federal Public Defender Samantha Jaffe, wrote in court papers that he “fled” to the United States from Mexico at age 18, and that his family fears he’ll be kidnapped — as has happened to other relatives — and murdered if he’s deported. Jaffe added that Garcia-Lopez got involved with the “wrong people” as he was struggling to get by in Oakland.
“He made unbelievably poor decisions, but those decisions were not made in a vacuum: they were on par with the incredibly poor decisions being made around him,” Jaffe wrote in court filings.