A former Douglas man placed on probation this summer after pleading guilty to participating in a drug trafficking operation throughout most of 2017 was back in a Cochise County court last week accused of multiple probation violations, including failure to comply with drug testing.
Louis Antonio Vidana began his four-year term of probation in August at the order of Judge Laura Cardinal of the Cochise County Superior Court. He was back in Cardinal’s courtroom Dec. 4 on a petition to revoke probation due to eight alleged violations between Oct. 29 through Nov. 16 including DUI, possession of drug paraphernalia, criminal damage, and use of Fentanyl.
Vidana, 28, is prohibited under his court-ordered conditions of probation from consuming or possessing “any alcohol or any illegal substances.” He will return to court Jan. 8 for a review hearing on whether he will continue with probation or be resentenced in the drug trafficking case.
The presumptive term of imprisonment for the Class 2 felony is five years.
Vidana and his co-defendant Jose Carlos Durazo were indicted in August 2018 after federal and local authorities came to suspect in 2017 that Durazo was trafficking of marijuana and cocaine across the border. Investigators utilized wiretaps, surveillance cameras, drug buys, and undercover stake-outs to build their case against the two men.
Durazo, aka Big Boy, faced decades in prison but he was sentenced in February to five years supervised probation after he pleaded guilty to participating from May to December 2017 in the furtherance of a criminal syndicate.
Like Vidana, Durazo’s plea deal was negotiated by the Cochise County Attorney’s Office.