SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — A San Francisco drug dealer was sentenced to prison on Friday after he was busted with 65 pounds of methamphetamine worth $1.5 million in street sales, prosecutors said.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick sentenced 46-year-old Alejandro “Chewy” Alvarez to serve 160 months in prison.
Alvarez managed a “sophisticated” drug distribution operation out of his apartment on Sanchez Street in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood, prosecutors wrote.
Evidence at trial showed that Alvarez had been distributing tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of methamphetamine and heroin monthly.
An investigation into Alvarez’s activities began when officers with the San Francisco Police Department learned that an individual who went by the name “Chewy” was selling heroin and other drugs.
Eventually officers developed enough evidence to obtain and execute a search warrant on Alvarez’s apartment. Police recovered over $46,000 in cash, some 65 pounds of methamphetamine, and other evidence of drug trafficking inside the apartment, prosecutors wrote.
Text messages between Alvarez and his customers — including their names, transaction dates, drug quantities, and drug types — matched up with a ledger found on Alvarez’s bed. It revealed that his dealing operation was capable of distributing hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of drugs annually. The week before his arrest, he sold $15,300 worth of methamphetamine and heroin, according to prosecutors.
A jury found Alvarez guilty following a 4-day trial in April.