SPOKANE, Wash. –Dr. Duncan Lahtinen, a licensed physician, has paid $120,000.00 in penalties to resolve allegations that he wrote prescriptions for controlled substances that lacked legitimate medical purposes or were outside the usual course of his professional practice. Between 2017 and 2025, Dr. Lahtinen issued over 1,400 prescriptions for controlled...

Yakima, Wash. – Thirteen people are charged following the return of 12 indictments alleging more than a dozen charges against these defendants for trafficking fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana on the Yakama Nation Reservation. The arrests follow a long-term joint federal, local, and tribal investigation that began in late 2024...

YAKIMA, Wash. – Gabriela Abundiz, age 45, was sentenced after pleading guilty to distributing methamphetamine. Chief United States District Judge Stanley A. Bastian imposed a sentence of 180 months to be followed by 10 years of supervised release. According to court documents and information presented at the sentencing hearing, in...

Tacoma, Wash. – The leader of a South Puget Sound drug trafficking organization that sent dangerous drugs as far away as Georgia and Ohio was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to ten years in prison for his multi-state drug trafficking scheme, announced U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman...

POCATELLO – U.S. Attorney Josh Hurwit announced the sentences for two separate East Idaho methamphetamine traffickers who will serve a collective 21.5 years in federal prison. Fredy Munoz-Morales, a/k/a Fredi Munoz-Morales, 36, a Mexican citizen and national, was sentenced to 12.5 years in federal prison for possession with intent to...

POCATELLO – Dr. Gerald Knouf, a family medicine doctor formerly of Pocatello, Idaho, agreed to pay $96,000 to resolve allegations that he wrote unlawful prescriptions, prescribed dangerous combinations of drugs, and billed Medicare and Medicaid for services that were not performed, U.S. Attorney Josh Hurwit announced today. The settlement also...

PORTLAND, Ore.-The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon announced today that it has forfeited on behalf of the United States 14 real properties located in Oregon—together worth more than $5.7 million—that were used by an interstate drug trafficking organization to illegally grow marijuana for redistribution and sale in...

SEATTLE– Ten members of a South Puget Sound drug trafficking organization were indicted following a lengthy investigation that uncovered the trafficking of marijuana to East Coast locales, and the importation and distribution of fentanyl and cocaine in Western Washington. Multiple search warrants were served this morning and eight people were...

SPOKANE, Wash.– The Ferry County Hospital District agreed to pay a $15,000 Controlled Substances Act penalty and to institute corrective actions in regards to opioid prescribing practices at Republic Drug Store, a pharmacy in Republic, Washington, that Ferry County Hospital District purchased in January 2021 and has continued to operate...

MEDFORD, Ore.—A Josephine County, Oregon man who distributed marijuana throughout the U.S. using his private airplane, and who hired a hitman to kill a drug trafficking associate, was sentenced to federal prison today. John Tobe Larson, 71, was sentenced to 35 months in federal prison and five years of supervised...