Daniel Jack Parrent Pleads Guilty in U.S. Federal Court

The United States Attorney’s Office announced that during a federal court session in Billings, on June 26, 2012, before Chief U.S. District Judge Richard F. Cebull, Daniel Jack Parrent, a 26-year-old resident of Bozeman, pled guilty to conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute marijuana. Sentencing has been set for September 22, 2012. He is currently released on special conditions.

In an offer of proof filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica T. Fehr, the government stated it would have proved at trial the following:

On July 20, 2010, a Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Office deputy initiated a traffic stop on a black 2010 Mercedes Benz SUV after running the license plate and determining that the owner had a valid arrest warrant. The owner of the vehicle provided a false name to the deputy but ultimately admitted the individual’s name. A narcotics-detecting K-9 was called to the scene and positively alerted on the vehicle for the presence of narcotic odors.

The vehicle was impounded pending a search warrant application. A subsequent search yielded airline tickets, a cell phone, documents, $14,154 in cash, and user amounts of marijuana.

Pursuant to the search warrant, detectives had the cell phone seized from the vehicle analyzed. The contents revealed that the owner of the vehicle had been involved with selling multiple pounds of marijuana, as well as transporting tens of thousands of dollars in cash. Some of the text messages on the phone blatantly discussed prices for pounds of marijuana, smuggling bulk cash via the airlines, having bulk cash from drug proceeds deposited into bank accounts, and dealing marijuana to the Indian reservations in Montana. According to the text messages on the phone marijuana was distributed to Browning, Polson, Crow Agency, as well as Havre, St. Ignatius, Great Falls, Missoula, Cut Bank, Lolo, and other places throughout Montana.

One of the subjects having drug-related communications with the owner of the vehicle stopped in Yellowstone County was Parrent of Bozeman. When interviewed by law enforcement, Parrent admitted to being a drug courier for the owner of the vehicle and making numerous trips to California and Washington to pick up marijuana from a supplier in Humboldt County, California and elsewhere. Parrent’s trips to pick up marijuana occurred during the course of the conspiracy, the summer of 2008 to the summer of 2010. Parrent estimated he personally delivered over 50 pounds of marijuana to the owner of the vehicle. Additional investigation uncovered that the members of the conspiracy, including Parrent, possessed with the intent to distribute over 100 kilograms of marijuana during the course of the conspiracy. It was reasonably foreseeable to Parrent that the conspiracy would distribute over 100 kilograms of marijuana.

Parrent faces possible penalties of a mandatory minimum of five years and could be sentenced to 40 years, a $2,000,000 fine, and four years’ supervised release.

The investigation was a cooperative effort between the Billings Big Sky Safe Streets Task Force and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.