A Mexican citizen has been given a long federal prison sentence for bringing many pounds of methamphetamine to Redding. 41-year-old Rafael Pahua Martinez ran a Redding-based meth distribution ring from his home in Orland. He used couriers to carry large quantities of the drug from Southern California. Federal DEA agents investigated Martinez for a year, and between September of 2014 and July of 2015 undercover agents made four large purchases from Martinez. Each time an agent negotiated the price with Martinez and a courier would later make the actual sale in a public parking lot in Shasta or Tehama County. Agents learned of two large shipments of methamphetamine in June of 2015 from Southern California to Tehama County, one of them 14 kilograms. The other was 10 kilograms, for which he paid $88,000. A few weeks later agents arrested Martinez in Orland and found almost $50,000 in his possession. Last Thursday Martinez was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison.