An upstate New York native who took his wit and intelligence and tried to succeed in the Hollywood movie machine will spend five years in a federal prison for flying marijuana into Wisconsin aboard his private plane.

Iowa County authorities, acting on information from federal drug investigators, met Trevor Ryan’s plane when it landed at the remote airport near Mineral Point on Oct. 18. It was carrying about 157 pounds of high-grade marijuana worth almost an estimated $500,000.

Federal prosecutors said Ryan, 29, who was sentenced Tuesday to 65 months in prison, was motivated purely by greed.
But Ryan, of Ukiah, Calif., a frustrated movie screenwriter and comedian, said he grew and sold marijuana as part of a desperate scheme to fund a movie project.

Ryan’s attorney, Michelle Tjader, wrote in a sentencing memorandum that Ryan was a smart and successful student at Ithaca College in New York, then moved to Los Angeles. He worked as a receptionist and script reader for a production company connected to Warner Brothers, but failed to sell any scripts of his own.

Ryan wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb that as his career in Hollywood foundered, he became depressed and anxious.

“I slowly but surely went into a tailspin which culminated when I made the wrong and stupid decision to transport marijuana to Wisconsin,” Ryan wrote. “Somehow I’d convinced myself that I could raise money that way which would help me finance a film project I was interested in. The truth is — during that period — I let self-pity control me which is why I’m currently in custody.”

Crabb said that even though Ryan had no prior criminal record, she was concerned that he could re-offend. Her concern stemmed from Ryan’s purchase of the twin-engine Piper Aztec — the plane that he flew to Wisconsin — only months after his home near Los Angeles had been raided by federal authorities in January 2008, who found a marijuana growing operation and several weapons, among them a semi-automatic rifle.

Ryan told Crabb the marijuana he grew and sold in California was intended for the medical marijuana market, which is legal in California. As president of the Healing Collective, Tjader wrote, Ryan had legal status in California as a compassionate care provider.

But responding to questions from Crabb, Ryan admitted that the marijuana he grew did not stay in California and that he was not on a “humanitarian mission” to Wisconsin with his planeload of pot.