Truck firm owner to serve prison time for drugs
2/28/2014The former owner of a local trucking company was sentenced Thursday to 63 months in prison for transporting large quantities of marijuana from Arizona to Toledo.
Stanley L. Haythorne, 38, of Toledo pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in September to one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute marijuana and 13 counts of structuring financial transactions to evade reporting requirements.
Haythorne admitted he allowed his trucks to be used to haul marijuana between 2004 and January, 2009, and also admitted making bank deposits totaling $250,000 in increments just under the $10,000 reporting requirement.
He told the court he was running his business when some “associates” approached him about “helping them with some transportation.” He said he resisted at first and later agreed with the belief that only money would be transported in a specially built metal box on his truck.
Haythorne, owner of Haythorne Logistics Inc., was arrested on Jan. 14, 2009, in Oklahoma when a truck he was a passenger in was pulled over for a traffic violation and police confiscated some 183 pounds of marijuana.
“I’m accepting my responsibility in this. I knew I was wrong,” Haythorne said. “I’m embarrassed by my actions.”
After hearing Haythorne's account, Judge Jack Zouhary said Haythorne may have been trying to separate himself from his friends “whose hands may have been more dirty than yours, but they certainly, for whatever reason, persuaded you to become involved and you were involved in this, and in the eyes of the law you’re as guilty as they were even if you never saw any of the drugs or touched any of the drugs.”
The judge said he also had to consider that this was not a one-time lapse of judgment.
“It’s one thing to make a mistake and go, ‘Oh gosh, I wish I hadn't done that,’ but this is a mistake that was made repeatedly time after time over multiple years,” Judge Zouhary said before sentencing Haythorne.