Floyd County Man To Serve House Arrest

REAL ESTATE BROKER SENTENCED IN CRUZ DRUG CASE

Earl Frith was indicted in 1991 on charges he belonged to an international
ring that smuggled more than 2 tons of cocaine through the Roanoke Valley.

For masking the source of money that a Colombian cocaine smuggler paid him
a decade ago for cows, Floyd County real estate broker Earl Frith must
spend the next four months confined in his home .

Ending a legal odyssey that left Frith in limbo for years, U.S. District
Judge James Turk Wednesday also ordered him to pay a $10,000 fine. But in
sentencing Frith, the judge said federal prosecutors waited too long to
bring the white-haired, 65-year-old businessman to trial and because of
that he shouldn't go to prison.

Turk's sentence disappointed Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Mott, who said
Frith deserved more than 10 months in prison for his dealings with
convicted kingpin Javier Cruz. But it thrilled Frith's 26 supporters who
attended the hearing. His son, Mark Frith, cried as he strolled toward the
bench and hugged Turk .

"I felt that what he did was very beautiful, considering the prosecution
wouldn't let it go," Mark Frith later explained. "I was just touched beyond
- -- I couldn't hold the tears back any more."

Frith was indicted in 1991 on charges he belonged to an international drug
ring headed by Cruz and his boss, Leonardo Rivera, that smuggled more than
two tons of cocaine through the Roanoke Valley. The indictment, the
culmination of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration investigation dubbed
Operation El Cid, named 50 defendants scattered from New York City to Cali,
Colombia, many of whom are still at large.

Frith's charges stemmed from a 1989 deal in which he sold 30 pregnant
Holsteins for $16,000 to Cruz, who was then posing as a Floyd County dairy
farmer. Frith was accused of breaking up, or "structuring," the money into
two $8,000 deposits to evade federal banking laws that require cash
transaction of more than $10,000 to be reported to the IRS.

The U.S. Attorney's Office kept the 1991 indictment sealed for six years,
claiming its release would jeopardize Operation El Cid. When the case
finally went to trial in 1998, a jury convicted Frith of structuring,
acquitted him of two cocaine charges, but deadlocked on a money laundering
count.

Turk declared a mistrial on the laundering charge. He then dismissed both
that and the structuring conviction, agreeing with the defense that Frith's
right to a speedy trial under the Sixth Amendment had been violated.
Prosecutors appealed, and in June, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
overturned Turk and ordered Frith be sentenced.

Defense attorney David Walker appealed the 4th Circuit's ruling to the U.S.
Supreme Court, which has yet to decide whether to hear the case. Last week,
Walker asked Turk to postpone the sentencing until the high court's
decision. Turk refused, but Wednesday expressed sympathy for Frith's
situation.

"The thing that concerned me then, and the thing that concerns me now, is
the long delay in bringing you to trial," Turk said. "It still seems to me
your constitutional rights were violated, and nothing the 4th Circuit wrote
in its opinion convinces me otherwise."

Afterward, Frith said, "I didn't knowingly do anything to help the drug
business. ..."

Both he and his attorney claim the government spent too much pursuing him
and not enough on Cruz, who fled to Colombia in 1998 before his sentencing.
n August, Cruz was rumored to have been shot and killed.

"People high up in our government want us to believe he was killed in
Colombia," Frith said. "God knows what the government's done with him."

Told of Frith's accusation, U.S. Attorney Bob Crouch laughed and said the
government has done nothing with Cruz.

"I certainly have no knowledge that's occurring," Crouch said, "and we were
certainly disappointed he fled, in part because we wanted him to receive
justice in our system as well as credit for what he'd done. ... Certainly,
rhetoric is not unknown in the courtroom."

Crouch says he still has no confirmation from Colombia about Cruz's
reported death. The U.S. Marshals Service has an open file on Cruz listing
him as a fugitive.

As for Frith, he now begins his four months at home monitored by an
electronic ankle device, free to manage his properties including the 314
acres around Galax for which he paid $414,750 two weeks ago at a Dixon
Lumber Co. auction.

Frith left court Wednesday still facing a possible retrial for the
money-laundering charge, which the 4th Circuit reinstated along with the
structuring conviction. owever, Crouch said his office will not seek to try
Frith again.

Meanwhile, arrests stemming from Operation El Cid continue. uthorities
Sunday arrested Humberto "PumPum" Cadavid in Sydney, Australia. The
government alleges he was Rivera's lieutenant and arranged for delivery of
396 pounds of cocaine from New York to Arizona in 1990. Mott said Wednesday
that he hopes Cadavid will be extradited to the United States by January to
stand trial on his two charges.