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A judge sentenced a 43-year-old Hayward man to a decade in prison for attempts to help get and move cocaine by smuggling it through San Francisco International Airport, the U.S. Justice Department said.
According to a statement, Lemack Bellot was convicted earlier this year after a week-long trial where government representatives presented evidence that he tried to help smuggle items he thought were cocaine through the airport in May and in November of 2018.
As it turned out, Bellot had been talking with a confidential source who worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration and posed as an Atlanta-based drug dealer. As previously reported by this news organization, the two met several times at Fogline Sports Bar and Grill in Hayward, a bar owned by Bellot that got its name after an appearance on “Bar Rescue,” a reality TV show which gives makeovers to struggling bars. Before, the bar had been called Russell City Sports Bar and Grill.
The source sought to help the DEA investigate reports that Bellot had paid workers to let drugs through airport security. On six occasions over the next eight months, Bellot made what he believed were arrangements through airline employees and fee payments to help the source move drugs through Bay Area airports.
A federal grand jury indicted Bellot in February 2019 for attempting to aid and abet possession with intent to distribute at least 500 grams of cocaine, and attempting to aid and abet possession with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine.
After a jury found him guilty March 4, government representatives offered additional documentation toward his sentencing that showed Bellot tried to sell heroin to and buy cocaine from the same confidential source.
In July, just before a scheduled sentencing, Bellot boarded a Haiti-bound commercial cargo freighter boat out of Miami, but U.S. Coast Guard investigators boarded the vessel and arrested him.
U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria sentenced Bellot Tuesday to 10 years in prison, as well as a five-year term of supervised release.
Contact George Kelly at 408-859-5180.
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