Miami’s Harrison Garcia, also known as Cuban Harry,
was convicted of selling an illegal codeine-spiked drink
known as “lean.” Instagram
AUGUST 18, 2017 11:51 AM
The Miami man believed to have supplied music
stars Lil’ Wayne and Chris Brown with painkiller-spiked
soda drinks is headed to prison for 30 years.
A federal judge sentenced Harrison Garcia, also known
as Cuban Harry, four months after jurors convicted him
of armed drug trafficking.
U.S. Judge Patricia Seitz said Garcia’s crimes were serious
against the backdrop of a national drug epidemic that
“dehumanizes and enslaves” addicts. “It is the kind of
conduct that is very much a scourge on our community,”
Seitz said.
Garcia,
27, remained calmed during Friday’s brief
sentencing in federal court.
“I want
to briefly apologize to my parents and your
honor,” Garcia said. “Hopefully, I
learn from this.”
Garcia, who’s story was first chronicled in
the Miami
Herald in December, was believed by the feds to have
supplied South
Florida’s hip-hop scene with the
potent
drink known as “lean” while jet setting around
the world with singer Chris
Brown and shooting rap
videos with Lil’ Wayne.
Miami’s Harrison Garcia,
also known as Cuban Harry, was
convicted of selling an illegal codeine-spiked
drink known as
“lean.” He is pictured here with singer Chris Brown.
Instagram
Federal
agents say Garcia was a big supplier of
“lean,” or “sizzurp,” a powerful brew
of soda and
prescription-strength syrup of promethazine with
codeine.
Variations of the “lean” drink have been
popular in hip-hop imagery and songs
over the past
decade, with rappers such as Lil’ Wayne, Young Thug
and Future
dropping odes to the concoction.
Garcia’s
Instagram page — which has over 30,000
followers — portrayed a rap-video
lifestyle; he proudly
showed off garish gold chains and wads of cash,
jewel-encrusted teeth and many tattoos, including
one of the fictional drug
kingpin Scarface wielding
an assault rifle.
He was
never subtle about his love of lean. He called
himself “Muhammad_a_Lean” and
the “CEO of Purple
Drank,” sported a diamond-encrusted pendant of a styrofoam
cup and posted many photos of soda and cough syrup.
Garcia
insisted he was nothing more than a junkie, not a
dealer, who tried to play the
part of dope peddler on social
media to build street cred for his hip-hop
career. “I had an
image to portray, to boost up my followers,” Garcia
testified at a pre-trial
hearing in January. “I guess it’s
just the music industry.”
Over four
days of testimony at his April trial, jurors heard
that Garcia admitted he sold
“large amounts of narcotics”
to rapper Lil Wayne, and
received a $15,000 payment from
singer Chris Brown for drugs, including lean.
Miami’s Harrison Garcia, also known as Cuban Harry, was convicted
of selling an illegal codeine-spiked drink known as “lean.”
He is pictured here after appearing in Miami-Dade state court.
David Ovalle Miami Herald
Jurors viewed undercover videos of two drug deals
Garcia allegedly completed with two confidential
informants posing as buyers. They also saw a slew
of Instagram photos of Garcia showing off an arsenal
of guns, five of which were seized by U.S. Homeland
Security Investigation agents.
Garcia is also facing state racketeering charges in Broward,
where authorities say he paid a crew of young men to bust
into dozens of Walgreens and CVS stores to steal the pricey
bottles of promethazine with codeine syrup.
His lawyer in the federal case, Gus Lage, said his team
will appeal the sentence.
“Given that Harrison went to trial, refused to cooperate
and that draconian minimum mandatory sentences exist
which made 30 years and one day the lowest sentence that
could be imposed under the circumstances, we were pleased
that the court and the government agreed to the imposition
of the lowest sentence available,” Lage said.
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