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Minnesota resident Carlos Garces told Eagle County Sheriff’s Deputy Evan Jamarillo that he was just returning from a visit to his father in Las Vegas on Oct. 16.

But while he would later claim he wasn’t aware of it, Garces was actually transporting more than 130 pounds of methamphetamine at the time.

Garces’ attorney, on Wednesday, told Judge Rachel Olguin-Fresquez that despite his long criminal record, Garces had been a law-abiding citizen since 2013, when he began to turn his life around after the birth of his children.

Garces is the owner of a logistics business in Minnesota, where he moves parts around the country for different clients, his attorney said.

“Sometimes people would call if their car was broke down and they needed a certain muffler from Florida, and he would drive to Florida and get a muffler and get it back right away,” his attorney said. “In this specific instance, he was retained to travel to LAX and pick up a package there and deliver it back to an address in Minnesota. He was retained through his company, he drove a truck from Minnesota to LAX, there were texting messages where he is trying to determine where he picked the package up, and that was from one of the dispatchers of the company that had retained him.”

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Olguin-Fresquez said if Garces could have communicated that same story to Jamarillo, the circumstances may have been different.

“But I have had a chance to review the observations of the officer … and frankly, it does appear to me that you were aware of what was in the truck,” she said.

Jamarillo said he was already aware of everywhere Garces’ vehicle had been when he stopped him on Oct. 16 on Interstate 70 in Gypsum. Jamarillo is a member of the Gore Range Narcotics Interdiction Team, a local drug task force that uses Motorola’s vigilant license plate reader database to track the movements of vehicles throughout the country.

“I had this vehicle listed as a vehicle of interest for suspicious travel patterns traveling from Minnesota to Ontario, California,” Jamarillo wrote in his report. “The vehicle stayed in California for less than a day before heading back north out of California. This travel pattern historically has been indicative of criminal activity as it goes against the normal activity of the general motoring public.”

So when Garces told Jamarillo he had been visiting Las Vegas, not California, Jamarillo became suspicious.

“Carlos said that he was in Las Vegas for a couple of days, which was inaccurate based on the [Motorola database] reads, which showed he only drove through Las Vegas en route to Ontario, California and back through Las Vegas headed to Minneapolis,” Jamarillo said. “Carlos’s trip was hard and fast travel from Minnesota to California and back. It was evident he did not pick anyone up in California and seemed unreasonable for him to go to California for mere hours. I noticed that Carlos was shaking and quivering and was sweating on his face. I felt the nervousness was beyond that of the normal public during a traffic stop.”

Garces’ wife spoke at Wednesday’s hearing, asking Olguin-Fresquez for leniency.

“It has been very difficult not having my husband here,” Garces’ wife told Olguin-Fresquez. “We do have two children together, our youngest is 12, and he is missing a lot of his life. I don’t want him to miss any more.”

Olguin-Fresquez said she found it hard to believe that Garces went from being a law-abiding citizen for 10 years to trafficking 132 pounds of methamphetamine across the western United States.

Garces’ criminal history with drugs goes back to 1988 in Minnesota when he was convicted of violating the federal Controlled Substances Act. Five years later, in federal court in South Carolina, he was charged with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and sentenced to 51 months in federal prison. His most recent drug charges came in 2013, along with an aggravated forgery conviction.

“Your history would indicate that you have a history of trafficking illegal substances — this appears to be in line with that history,” Olguin-Fresquez said.

Olguin-Fresquez sentenced Garces to 10 years in the Colorado Department of Corrections, with three years of mandatory probation following his sentence. He will receive credit for the 266 days he has served in the Eagle County jail.