SAN JOSE — A Monterey County man who was caught running a drug business twice — in 2019 and 2020 — has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison, court records show.
Manuel Angel Vargas, 48, pleaded guilty to multiple methamphetamine charges, as well as to selling heroin and possessing a firearm and ammunition, court records show. He was sentenced in June by U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman.
Prosecutors say Vargas, a “self-admitted Norteño” who went by “Droopy de Castroville,” was caught in September 2019 with 10 pounds of methamphetamine, one pound of heroin, more than $12,000 in cash and a loaded firearm in his Castroville home. In a subsequent July 2020 police raid, authorities allegedly found $3,840 in cash, about a half-pound of heroin and roughly three-quarters of a pound of methamphetamine.
The police also found “kites,” or handwritten notes pertaining to gang business. One seized in 2020 referenced “an individual by the moniker of ‘Razor Bully’ selling narcotics and being supplied by the Sinaloa Cartel,” and refers to three people “assisting in selling narcotics and the proceeds and contributions being forwarded to ‘Droopy de Castroville,’” prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum.
Vargas’ lawyer countered that it “defies reason” the well-organized Norteño gang would trust a “full-blown addict” like Vargas to sell drugs for them, and that Vargas maintains his supplier wasn’t part of any gang.
“Mr. Vargas’s past gang affiliation was merely incidental to his offense, and it is incorrect to link the two for sentencing purposes,” Assistant Federal Public Defender Varell Fuller wrote in a sentencing memo.
Vargas himself authored an apology letter — attached along with numerous certificates and support letters — calling his arrests from years ago a turning point in his life. For 30 years, he wrote, he was “stuck in a rut, unmoved and detached from the world.
“My addiction and street life engulfed me with shame and guilt. It brought nothing but negativity, failures, one bad choice after another and just complete darkness in my life,” Vargas wrote. He later added, “By the grace of God, my arrest was his answer to the prayers of my family. As difficult as it was to accept in the beginning, being arrested was a life-changing blessing for me. Today, I submit myself before you, a changed man.”