Facing jail time. 90 Day Fiancé star Jorge Nava revealed in a new interview published on Saturday, September 8, that he is headed to prison for two-and-a-half years for allegedly trying to sell 293 pounds of marijuana.
“With the charges against me, I was looking at around 24 years or something like that … some ridiculous number,” the reality star told TMZ in a video clip. “But luckily my lawyer was able to work out a plea agreement and I got the charges dropped and I ended up pleading to a class 4 felony in Arizona.”
The 28-year-old was arrested in February after he was pulled over for a traffic stop in Arizona and police discovered the marijuana in the trunk of his car. He had previously pleaded guilty to drug trafficking.
Still, Nava wasn’t thrilled with his shorter sentence, saying, “I feel like it’s really harsh of a penalty for the crime being … just because it’s marijuana-related and right now it’s going legal in a lot of states, it’s actually medically legal in Arizona.”
“I just feel like the fact of it, just going to prison over the same stuff that’s legal, is just kind of crazy to me,” he added.
The TLC star then switched gears, opening up about his relationship with wife Anfisa Arkhipchenko, who he married after meeting through Facebook. “There’s really nothing wrong in our relationship right now, we’ve been really good these last couple months, I mean, she’s been here supporting me through this whole journey, and she’s gonna be with me throughout this whole process and after that, too. I really don’t see us splitting up!”
The couple spoke out about his upcoming sentencing a day before his September 7 trial in a YouTube video. “On February 7, I was pulled over with a bunch of stuff in my car,” Nava said. “A bunch of illegal stuff.”
He then claimed that the police offer pulled him over while he was driving a rental car for “no reason,” adding, “I feel like there’s a lot of profiling going on. I just feel like if us citizens have to obey the laws, there shouldn’t be anybody else with more authority, you know? Especially police officers. They should be trying to help the community.”
He went on to explain that he did not give the officer permission to search his car, but that a police canine alerted the officer to the drugs, at which point he was arrested.
Nava also admitted to two previous convictions for cultivation of marijuana (“Just to set that straight, that’s my criminal record”), which he said ultimately led to his lengthy sentence. “[My lawyer] told me that if I didn’t have any priors I’d most likely get probation time.”
With regard to his plea deal, Nava told followers, “I feel like is still not fair, but I didn’t want to risk going to prison for a long period of time, so I felt like this was the best option.”
His wife, meanwhile, has not been getting along so well with some of her other castmates. Her pregnant costar Paola Mayfield, who is expecting her first child with husband Russ Mayfield, told Us Weekly in July that she wanted distance from the Russian-born reality star after their explosive fight during the season 3 tell-all, which was the culmination of a long-running feud.
“I don’t want to be close to [Anfisa] because knowing how she would react,” she said at the time. “Because after what happened last Sunday … I don’t want that close to me right now. I just have to protect myself.”
Mayfield also addressed claims made by Nava’s ex-girlfriend that he was the father of her 10-year-old daughter.
“I just want … for the baby … not to be in that situation,” she told Us. “She doesn’t deserve that, so hopefully they can fix that and they can move on. … [Anfisa] shouldn’t have to leave him because at the end, it’s in the past, and if she loves him that much, she’ll just pick up with him and support him because he loves her.”
