BANGOR (AP) – A former altar boy is going to prison for nearly five years for conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine in northern Maine.

U.S. District Judge John Woodcock on Friday sentenced 23-year-old Roberto Rodriguez of Central Falls, R.I., to 57 months in federal prison.

Rodriguez was born and raised in Puerto Rico and attended Catholic schools until he dropped out in his senior year of high school. Last year he moved to Rhode Island, where he worked odd jobs and fell in with drug dealers.

Federal drug agents arrested Rodriguez and another man last September in Brewer.

Rodriguez’s mother, Maria Rodriguez of Puerto Rico, wept as she asked Woodcock for leniency at her son’s sentencing.