Mincoff

I. BACKGROUND

Mincoff and Jessie Munoz (Munoz)1 met through a mutual 1 Munoz was originally one of four named defendants, but he entered a guilty plea and agreed to cooperate with the government. He was the main government witness at trial. UNITED STATES v. MINCOFF 9987 friend during the late 1990s. Mincoff called Munoz in April or May, 2004, to ask whether Munoz had access to cocaine. Mincoff ordered eight kilograms of cocaine from Munoz. Because Munoz had never dealt cocaine before, he called Kenny Vega (Vega), his “meth connection,” to help him obtain the cocaine. Vega was only able to supply Munoz with five kilograms of cocaine rather than the requested eight. Two or three days after Mincoff placed the order, Vega’s driver “the Engineer” delivered the cocaine to Munoz’s home.

Munoz called Mincoff to inform him that the cocaine had arrived, and Mincoff arrived within the hour to retrieve the drugs. Mincoff and Munoz agreed that Mincoff would take the cocaine to his customer and return with payment, which he did. Once Munoz received the purchase money from Minc- off, he paid Vega’s driver. Future transactions between Minc- off and Munoz remained a…