WASHINGTON - The Department of Justice has designated Robert W. Patterson as the Drug Enforcement Administration acting administrator. Patterson was appointed as DEA’s principal deputy administrator in November 2016. In that role, he served as DEA’s chief operating officer, overseeing all of the agency’s enforcement, intelligence, administrative, and regulatory activities...

SANTA ANA, Calif. - A federal jury has convicted a physician assistant who worked at a Fountain Valley medical clinic on federal drug trafficking charges for writing prescriptions for dangerous and addictive narcotics without a medical purpose. The case is the result of an investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration...

LOS ANGELES - The leader of a narcotics-distribution ring pled guilty this morning to federal drug trafficking charges and admitted importing a powerful synthetic opioid from China that was used to produce homemade pills that were distributed in bulk across the nation. Gary Resnik, 32, of Long Beach, led a...

MANHATTAN, N.Y. - Joon H. Kim, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Raymond Donovan, the Special Agent-in-Charge of the Special Operations Division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration today announced that Muhammad Asif Hafeez, aka “Sultan,” was provisionally arrested in London pursuant to...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - As a result of several long-term DEA investigations, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets (OFAC) today identified Mexican national Raul Flores Hernandez and the Flores Drug Trafficking (Flores DTO) as Significant Foreign Narcotics Traffickers pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation (Kingpin Act)...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is proposing a reduction for controlled substances that may be manufactured in the U.S. next year by 20 percent as compared to 2017, per the proposed notice being published in the Federal Register on August 7, 2017 and available for public inspection...

LOS ANGELES - The operators of seven sham medical clinics were among 12 defendants taken into custody this morning on federal drug trafficking charges that allege they diverted at least 2 million prescription pills - including oxycodone and other addictive and dangerous narcotics - to the black market. Two indictments...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Justice Department today announced the seizure of the largest criminal marketplace on the Internet, AlphaBay, which operated for over two years on the dark web and was used to sell deadly illegal drugs, stolen and fraudulent identification documents and access devices, counterfeit goods, malware and other...

RENO, N.V. - Local physician Dr. Robert Rand pleaded guilty today to involuntary manslaughter of a patient and unlawful distribution of oxycodone to another patient, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Steven W. Myhre for the District of Nevada. Sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 23, 2017, before U.S. District Judge Miranda Du...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Department of Health and Human (HHS) Secretary Tom Price, M.D., announced today the largest ever health care fraud enforcement action by the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, involving 412 charged defendants across 41 federal districts, including 115 doctors, nurses and other licensed medical...