Former California prison officer pleads guilty to federal cocaine charge after Stockton bust

A former California correctional officer pleaded guilty on Tuesday to one count of conspiring to possess and distribute cocaine, federal prosecutors announced.

Fidel Andrade, 36, faces a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison, although the plea agreement filed Tuesday in Sacramento federal court shows that the U.S. Attorney Phil Talbert’s Office plans to ask for a more lenient term, plus three years of supervised release.

An FBI affidavit filed with the court in 2022 alleged that Andrade, who did not have a prior criminal record, supplied cocaine to a co-defendant, Neftali Castillo Montes, who has already pleaded guilty in the case.

Andrade worked as a correctional officer for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation while distributing cocaine, but he was not charged with distributing cocaine at a prison or on the job, said Lauren Horwood, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Montes was accused of selling more than 9 ounces of cocaine to an FBI confidential source, Talbert said in a news release.

In the plea agreement, Andrade admitted that he had supplied cocaine to Montes on four different occasions in 2020, for a total amount of 161.5 grams, or 5.7 ounces. He also admitted that he possessed 23.1 grams, or 0.8 ounces of cocaine that officers discovered during a search of his home in Stockton in 2021.

The case was part of an investigation conducted by multiple state and federal agencies, including CDCR, Customs and Borders Protection, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Homeland Security Investigations, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Tracy Police Department, Talbert said in the news release.

Andrade is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 14. Montes is scheduled to be sentenced two weeks later.