Famed architect to be sentenced for drug smuggling - San Diego, California News Station - KFMB Channel 8 - cbs8.com

SAN DIEGO (AP) — An acclaimed architect was sentenced Monday to six months in prison for hiding nearly 13 pounds of cocaine in his minivan's battery before he tried to enter the U.S.

A federal judge ordered the unusually light punishment after Eugenio Velazquez claimed drug traffickers threatened to kill him if he refused to carry the cocaine.

Velazquez, 51, embraced his smiling wife, daughters and supporters outside court after being told to report to prison Jan. 11 to begin a the sentence in federal custody, followed by six more months of home confinement.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Whelan said the ability of Velazquez to verify threats against him were crucial to the sentence.

Velazquez pleaded guilty in June to trying to bring 12.8 pounds of cocaine into the U.S. in a special lane for prescreened, trusted motorists. A drug-sniffing dog alerted inspectors to five packages hidden in the battery of his 2004 Nissan Quest at San Diego's San Ysidro port of entry.

Velazquez is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Mexico, and a member of Tijuana's elite, equally at ease on both sides of the border. He lives in a modest, suburban San Diego neighborhood and had a flourishing career designing some of the Mexican border city's most prominent buildings over the past decade, including its new main cathedral, an expansion of the Tijuana Cultural Center, and police headquarters.

Velazquez claimed criminals threatened to kill him and hurt his family if he refused.

"I never imagined I would be standing here," he told the judge.

Velazquez could have faced a minimum mandatory sentence of 10 years for importing a controlled substance, but his lack of a criminal record and other factors gave the judge discretion to deliver the more lenient punishment.

Prosecutors asked for 2½ years in prison in a brief court filing but made no argument after the judge signaled he was leaning toward the lighter sentence.

Warren had asked for one year of home confinement.

A court filing by his attorney, Jeremy Warren, said Velazquez's downfall began with a project to design the facade of a ranch.

The architect, fearful of drug-fueled violence in Tijuana, accepted his client's offer to provide personal security while Velazquez crossed the border between home and work.

The arrangement seemed to work out so well that Velazquez referred a friend who also wanted protection.

Then the client — unnamed in the filing — demanded the men pay $40,000 or drive drugs across the border. He flipped a coin to determine who would transport the drugs and Velazquez lost. The architect surrendered his minivan for packing and got the call to move the cocaine on March 4, his wife's birthday.

Velazquez's attorney told reporters after the sentencing that the friend verified the claims for U.S. investigators. Both men said they were threatened at gunpoint.

"This does happen but it's extremely difficult to convince anybody," Warren said.

As Mexican cartels move cocaine north from South America, they rely on "mules" to hide small packages of drugs in vehicle compartments and on their bodies to get past U.S. inspectors on the Mexico border. Many couriers are young, poor or adrift, desperate for a few hundred dollars.

At California crossings alone, inspectors seized 86 tons of marijuana, 7 tons of cocaine and 4 tons of methamphetamine in the 2011 fiscal year.

Born in the U.S. and raised and educated in Mexico, Velazquez, a college professor and devoted Catholic, has done more than 400 residential, commercial and liturgical projects during a 30-year career. His work ranges from utilitarian industrial parks for multinational corporations on Tijuana's eastern outskirts to some of the city's most recognized landmarks.

Zeta, a Tijuana newspaper known for investigating organized crime, named Velazquez its cultural person of the year in 2008. That same year, the Tijuana Cultural Center opened "El Cubo," or "The Cube," his $9-million, burnt-sienna structure that stands next to a distinctive globe-shaped building and provides enough space for large art exhibitions.

After being freed on $100,000 bond after his arrest, Velazquez opened an architecture and interior design firm with a friend in Chula Vista, a San Diego suburb.

Velazquez said Monday he would press ahead with Tijuana's Our Lady of Guadalupe Cathedral, a giant complex under construction across the street from City Hall that will be the seat of the Catholic archdiocese.

"He desperately wants to complete that project, and the church has stood behind him as the architect whose vision has been and will continue to be embodied throughout the structures and grounds," his attorney wrote the judge last week.