An Aurora shop owner who sold an Aurora college student the synthetic marijuana he smoked hours before dying after crashing his car into a North Aurora house in 2011 was sentenced Friday to two years in federal prison.
Crash investigators found no evidence Max Dobner tried to brake before the car hit the home with such force that the car’s engine ended up in another room.
Four people, including Cigar Box owner Ruby Mohsin, were federally charged for their roles in making or getting Max Dobner the synthetic drugs, marketed as incense or potpourri.
Friday morning, Max’s mother Karen Dobner made her victim impact statement. From her perspective, the woman who sold her son synthetic marijuana is responsible for his death and unremorseful, continuing to sell the “potpourri” after the crash and apologizing for the first time in court Friday.
But Mohsin maintains that she made a mistake she wishes she could take back, and begged the judge for leniency so she could continue living with her family and helping her adult children navigate life.
On the day Dobner crashed his car — June 14, 2011 — Mohsin sold three single-gram packages of synthetics to Dobner and a friend for $20. The next month, employee Mohammad Khan sold two small packages of Head Trip and Kush Potpourri at the Cigar Box for $30 to an undercover police officer, according to his plea.
“She knew what she was selling,” said prosecutor Matthew Schneider. “These are names intended to entice younger customers (and) invoke a drug high.”
Mohsin’s two sons testified in an earlier sentencing hearing. Friday, her daughter took the stand, telling the court how hard her mom worked to provide and care for her children after their father died. Mohsin was strict, her children have said: No drinking, no drugs and no smoking cigarettes. She took over the Cigar Box because it seemed like a good opportunity to make money, her daughter said.
“There is no question that she has been a good mother with respect to her own family, and that she has labored hard to help them through life,” Judge Charles Norgle Sr. said of Mohsin.
But Norgle also characterized her as greedy and resistant to accepting responsibility. From dealing with her son’s and her own prescription medications, she knows a lot about dosage, so she should know how dangerous it is to sell products with uncontrolled quantity dosage and purity, he said.
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“In effect she sells a time bomb in a little bag and says on the way out, ‘thank you for your purchases,’ while she rings up $20 for something she purchased for $2 or $3,” Norgle said.
Max’s mother and grandmother both made victim impact statements, describing Max as an old soul, respectful and respected, who went out of his way to help his family and friends, never got into fights, could turn any situation into a fun time, and wanted to change the world.
“I always ask myself how a person can maintain such impeccable character so consistently,” Karen Dobner said of her son. “How did he do it? And… what would he do if he was in my situation?”
Following Max’s death, in what she described as an effort to create some good out of the worst thing that had ever happened to her, Dobner threw herself into advocacy for stronger laws and education about synthetic drugs. Then one day, after about four years, her older son reminded her that while Max was gone, the rest of there family was still there.
“In the process, I had neglected them when they needed me most,” Dobner said, through tears.
After closing statements by the attorneys, Mohsin chose to address the court.
Raised in Pakistan, Mohsin moved to the U.S. as a teenager, became a citizen, and has always wanted the best for her children, she said. Mohsin said she had thought she might lose one of her sons to cancer and understood Karen Dobner’s pain. Since Max died, Mohsin’s life has totally changed too, as she has dealt with depression and anxiety as a result, she said.
She said she did accept responsibility, blaming her lawyer for not telling her she was supposed to use that specific word. Norgle heard her out, but said he still did not believe she qualified for lower sentencing guidelines, pointing out the extensive arguments made by her federal defender didn’t seem consistent with accepting responsibility.
Once released from prison, Mohsin will be subject to two years of supervised release, with conditions including seeking lawful employment or vocational training, and she can’t own or operate a smoke shop.
Her lawyer asked for an extended date of surrender given the medical care Mohsin typically provides for one of her sons. Norgle agreed and ordered her to report May 1 to a to-be-designated facility.
A different judge last year sentenced distributor Suliman Tanus to 30 months in prison followed by two years of supervised release, to be served concurrently with his sentence in another case. Tanus sold at least 1,100 packages of synthetic marijuana to the Cigar Box between May 20 and June 16, 2011, in three deals described in his sentencing memo.
Tanus bought the synthetics wholesale from Kevin Seydel, of Bettendorf, Iowa, who made and sold them to customers in other states, including Louisiana, North Carolina and Illinois, according to court documents.
Seydel pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy to distribute the synthetics and was sentenced in June to four years in prison followed by two years of supervised release and fined $25,000.