Drug dealer gets 5 years

A Newport Beach drug dealer has been sentenced to 70 months in federal prison for trying to trade 100,000 pills of Ecstasy for cocaine, authorities said Tuesday.

Alexandru Sabau, 39, will also have three years of supervised release after he gets out, said Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one of the agencies involved in Sabau’s case.

Sabau was arrested June 27, 2008, after he tried to trade 100,000 Ecstasy pills, worth about $2 million, to an undercover ICE agent outside a Newport Beach coffee shop.

Sabau lived in the 9000 block of Residencia, a small street in the gated Newport Bluffs apartment complex off MacArthur Boulevard.

Sabau, a Canadian citizen of Romanian descent, caught the attention of authorities in Santa Monica, who then worked with ICE. From there, during the course of three months, an undercover agent bought larger and larger amounts of Ecstasy, a party drug popular with young people.

He increased his sale from 1,000 pills to 5,000 pills, and ultimately the deal for 100,000 pills, court documents show.

He was consistently looking to trade the pills for cocaine, which he would send to Las Vegas, documents showed. Immigration authorities were involved because the pills were coming in from Canada, officials said.

Sabau was also implicated in “Operation Candystore” in September 2008, when federal prosecutors indicted 18 men for allegedly trading millions in drugs with men in Canada.

The men had a network set up between Southern California and Canada, with the methamphetamines, cocaine and Ecstasy crossing the border both ways, prosecutors said.

One of the men in that case was paying for Sabau’s rent in Newport Beach with drug money, according to court documents.

Sabau is being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.