A Friday Harbor man was ordered to serve one year and four months in prison for selling cocaine to an informant working with the San Juan County Sheriff’s Department on four separate occasions beginning late last year.

On Sept. 30, Rene Morales-Pacheo was sentenced in San Juan County Superior Court to a total of 16 months in prison, and ordered to pay $950 in fines and fees. The 37-year-old Friday Harbor man pleaded guilty Aug. 25 to four counts of solicitation to deliver a controlled substance—cocaine, a Class C felony.

According to court documents, detectives initiated an investigation of alleged drug dealing by Morales-Pacheo after an individual, unidentified in court records, claimed to have seen him sharing and selling cocaine and heroin at several parties in the fall of 2013. That individual, who reportedly had participated as an informant in a number of previous local drug cases, several of which led to convictions, agreed to assist in the investigation.

The investigation led to a series of undercover drug buys, in which the informant paid Morales-Pacheo about $250 for a so-called “eight ball” of cocaine, roughly 3.4 grams, twice in mid-December and two more times in January. He was arrested at his home in mid-July, arraigned on the series of felony drug charges two days later, and released on $25,000 bail pending trial.

A San Juan Island resident of seven years, Morales-Pacheo faced a maximum sentence for each felony offense of five years in prison, a $10,000 fine, or both; however, the standard range of sentencing set by the state as applied to the 37-year-old, who reportedly has no known criminal history, is 15-45 months for each count.