A Miami man with ties to hip-hop stars Chris Brown and Lil Wayne has been sentenced to 30-years in federal prison after being convicted of armed drug trafficking.
The Miami Herald reports Harrison Garcia, also known as “Cuban Harry,” was believed to have supplied much of South Florida with drugs, including the painkiller spiked drug drink known on the streets as “lean.”
Over the course of his trial, prosecutors told U.S. Judge Patricia Seitz of instances they uncovered where Garcia traveled around the globe with Brown and appeared in rap videos with Wayne.
The 27-year-old Garcia remained calm at his sentencing, which was punctuated by the judge chastising him for peddling drugs that “dehumanizes and enslaves” addicts.
Federal investigators painted a picture where a sizable portion of Garcia’s business revolved around “lean” or “sizzurp,” a powerful combination of soda and prescription-strength syrup of promethazine with codeine. The drink is particularly popular in hip-hop circles, with Wayne being among a growing number of rappers that lionized the drug in song.
Garcia regularly boasted about his lifestyle on social media, often flashing sparkling jewelry and stacks of money on his Instagram page to his more than 30,000 followers. Among the many tattoos he sported was a drawing of the fictional drug kingpin Scarface.
Garcia often referred to himself as “CEO of Purple Drank,” and over his four-day trial last April jurors heard testimony he admitted selling “large amounts of narcotics to Wayne and receiving a $15,000 payment from singer Brown for lean.”
The Washington Post added Garcia’s claims that many of his boasts were just meant to bolster his “street cred” fell on deaf ears among jurors.
Prosecutors first began probing Garcia in August of 2015, at one point heavily focusing on his Instagram page for clues as to how he ran his empire. Homeland Security agents began monitoring him roughly a year later, capturing him selling promethazine with codeine and marijuana to a confidential informant on two separate occasions.
Later that year, authorities conducted a raid of his Miami home, where a Glock and a FN semiautomatic pistol were recovered along with two pounds of marijuana and a bottle of promethazine with codeine, carrying a street value of about $1,000.
Garcia also faces racketeering charges in state court, where he is accused of hiring a crew of robbers to steal the cough syrup and other drugs.
[Featured Image by Kevin Winter/Getty Images]
