Charles "Smoke" Hicks, 24, of Culver City was sentenced Monday to five years probation and ordered to pay $2,000 in fines for scheming to bribe ex-Transportation Security Administration agents at Los Angeles International Airport to help smuggle marijuana onto a flight.
Hicks, one of two drug couriers, plead guilty in his plea agreement and admitted that he and Millage J. Peaks IV, a retired Los Angeles city fire chief's son, promised to pay $500 for each suitcase containing marijuana that cleared security at LAX, according to prosecutors.
Peaks, who hatched the scheme, was sentenced to a year in federal prison and ordered to pay a $6,000 fine. Randy Littlefield, 29, of Paramount, another defendant, was sentenced to eight months in jail.
According to court documents, the conspiracy between the drug couriers and the TSA employees began in November, 2010.
“Peaks offered to pay coconspirator Dianna Perez, 28, of Inglewood a bribe fee of approximately $500 for each bag containing marijuana that coconspirator Perez cleared through airport security for the drug couriers,” according to the statement of facts contained in the five plea agreements.
“Over the course of the next year, conspirator Perez used her position with TSA to help the drug couriers circumvent airport security on approximately nine occasions,” the statement of facts continues. “She did this a number of ways.
First, she would instruct the drug couriers how to pack the marijuana so it would not trigger alarms on TSA’s explosive detection system. Coconspirator Perez would also personally screen the bags using TSA’s explosive detection system. Finally, if a bag did alarm, co-conspirator Perez would manually screen the bag and then clear it.”
Littlefield “cleared” bags on at least two occasions in exchange for $200 that was to be paid by Perez, according to the plea agreements.
Perez will be sentenced March 25. A second marijuana courier, Andrew Welter, 25, of Fontana, is expected to be sentenced April 8.
The case against Perez, Littlefield, and the drug couriers is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which received assistance from the Los Angeles Airport Police and the Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General.
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