BANGOR, Maine — A Clinton man was sentenced Tuesday at the Penobscot Judicial Center to two years in federal prison for selling cocaine in 2010 that at least one of his customers retrieved from a haystack.
Nathan Lake, 35, also was sentenced to three years of supervised release, according to information posted on the court’s electronic case filing system.
He pleaded guilty in August to one count of distribution of cocaine and aiding and abetting that distribution. He had been held without bail since then.
Lake sold an ounce of cocaine on March 25, 2010, to a confidential informant who recorded the conversation, according to the prosecution version of events to which he pleaded guilty. The informant gave Lake $1,400 provided by a law enforcement agent to pay off a debt for previous purchases and asked Lake to front him another ounce.
Lake agreed to do that and gave the informant directions to where the cocaine was hidden in a haystack at the end of a gravel road, the document said. The agent, who accompanied the informant to retrieve the drug, found the cocaine in a waterproof food container hidden in the haystack.
Lake was the 25th person sentenced in federal court in connection with a conspiracy to distribute drugs in the Waterville area led by Maurice McCray, 35, of New York City, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
McCray, who was sentenced in November, 2014, to 15 years and eight months in prison, is incarcerated at U.S Penitentiary Lee in Pennington Gap, Virginia, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons inmate locator website.
Lake faced up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million.