A man from the Mauricie region expressed relief at the Montreal courthouse on Friday as he was sentenced to a 30-month prison term for transporting cocaine and cash while drug traffickers were under investigation in Project Magot.
Yann Lamarche, 34, of St-Mathieu-du-Parc, a small town north of Shawinigan, told Superior Court Justice Marc David he was relieved to have finally put his case behind him even though he was heading straight to a federal penitentiary.
“I wanted to settle this long ago,” Lamarche said during his sentence hearing.
Lamarche was first arrested in September 2014, along with another man, while Regional Integrated Squad based in Trois-Rivières were investigating a large-scale cocaine transaction. When the accused were pulled over, police found a kilogram of the narcotic inside their vehicle along with more than $109,000 in cash. Lamarche was not charged until November 2015, when arrests were made in Project Magot, a lengthy investigation into several organized crime figures, including alleged Montreal Mafia leaders Leonardo Rizzuto, 48, and Stefano Sollecito, 49. Eighteen people in all ended up being charged in Project Magot.
Based on a summary of facts read into the court record by prosecutor Jonathan Meunier on Friday, Lamarche did not interact with either of the alleged Mafia leaders while they were being investigated. Lamarche pleaded guilty, in June, to being part of a conspiracy to traffic in cocaine and possession of the narcotic with intent to traffic. The charges were limited to what police discovered back in 2014.
David agreed with a joint sentence recommendation of an overall prison term of 30 months. Lamarche was detained for a matter of weeks after he was rearrested in 2015, so he has a little more than 28 months left to serve.
Lamarche is the fourth person to be sentenced in Project Magot so far.
