DETROIT, MI -- U.S. Attorney Babara L. McQuade's office says age should not be a factor.

Ninety-year-old Leo Sharp, a resident of Indiana, was busted with 104 kilograms of cocaine on Interstate 94 outside Ann Arbor in 2011 and after pleading guilty last October was sentenced to three years in federal prison Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Nancy G. Edmunds also ordered Sharp pay $500,000 in restitution and forfeit real estate he owns in Florida.

"In this case, it was important to balance the defendant's age with his conduct -- seven separate trips to transport more than 1,200 kilograms of cocaine across the country and into Michigan, for which he was paid more than $1 million by a major Mexican drug cartel," McQuade said. "In light of this conduct, the defendant's age should not be a get-out-jail free card."

Investigators say Sharp worked as a drug smuggler with ties to the Chapo Guzman Mexican drug cartel for the "better part of a decade."

The smuggling trip for which Sharp was convicted is "only one such trip that Sharp

and other couriers had undertaken to bring hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and

marijuana to southeast Michigan from Arizona," McQuade's office says.

