A Hayward sports bar owner has been found guilty for his role in a Bay Area cocaine smuggling operation, according to a release posted by the U.S Attorney's Northern California Office on Tuesday.
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Lemack Bellot, 42, has been charged with allegedly helping move shipments of cocaine through San Francisco International Airport on two separate occasions in 2018, and a jury has just found him guilty.
Bellot was the subject of a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation that suspected him of paying airport employees to help him move drugs past security.
Neither of the shipments in May and November 2018 actually contained cocaine, as Bellot had been unknowingly working with a "confidential source," that he met at his bar, the Fogline Sports Bar and Grill.
The confidential source posed as a drug trafficker from Atlanta who bought cocaine in the Bay Area and needed an easy way to bring it back to Atlanta for distribution. Bellot revealed to him that he’d smuggled cocaine through other Bay Area airports on other occasions to other cities in the United States.
He'd stopped temporarily because his contact had been reportedly arrested, but then started again when another airport employee with ties to both Oakland International Airport and SFO agreed to participate in the scheme.
In February 2019, Bellot was indicted by a federal grand jury for attempting to aid and abet the possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine and attempting to aid and abet the possession with intent to distribute 5 kilograms or more of cocaine, for which he was found guilty.
Bellot's sentencing hearing has not yet been set. He faces up to 40 years in prison as well as a fine of $250,000, plus restitution, for the first count. For the second count, he could get up to life in prison, and a fine of $500,000.
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