TAMPA, Fla. – A federal grand jury today returned an indictment charging Damian Sierra, 41, of Port St. Lucie, with possessing 500 grams or more of cocaine with the intent to distribute. If convicted, Sierra faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years, up to 40 years, in federal prison...

SAN DIEGO – Egisto Salerno, a medical doctor practicing in San Diego, pleaded guilty to opioid distribution in federal court today, admitting that he signed bogus prescriptions for multiple deceased or incarcerated patients. According to his plea agreement, Salerno, 75, illegally distributed 78,544 hydrocodone pills. Hydrocodone is an opioid pain...

TAMPA, Fla. - Jimmy Riascos-Riascos, 44, Colombia, South America, was sentenced to 24 years and 4 months in federal prison for conspiring to distribute cocaine on board vessels subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Riascos-Riascos had pleaded guilty on July 18, 2019. According to court records, Riascos-Riascos was...

ORLANDO, Fla. - Kenneth Bernard Smith, 55, of Winter Garden, was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison for possessing a loaded firearm and ammunition as a convicted felon, and for possessing with the intent to distribute heroin and cocaine. Smith had previously pleaded guilty to the offenses. According to...

SAN DIEGO – Orlando Balderas Guerrero, of Menifee, Calif., was sentenced in federal court today to 10 years in custody for participating in a conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. According to his plea agreement, Guerrero admitted that for a one-year period, he obtained bulk methamphetamine from a broker in Mexico and...

SAN DIEGO – April Spring Kelly, of San Diego, was sentenced in federal court on Friday to 14 years in prison for conspiring to smuggle more than 450,000 fentanyl pills from Mexico into the United States during a nine-month period ending in October 2018. According to admissions in her plea...

TAMPA, Fla. - Carlos Chavez-Aguirre, 35, Yesid Caicedo Asprilla, 50, and David Hurtado Vallecilla, 45, all Colombian nationals, were sentenced to 20, 12, and 11 years, respectively, in federal prison terms for conspiracy to distribute and to possess with the intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine while...

MIAMI - Dr. Rodolfo Gonzalez Garcia, 65, of Weston, Florida, was sentenced yesterday to eight years in prison, after previously pleading guilty to conspiring to dispense a controlled substance, Oxycodone. According to the court record, including the agreed upon factual proffers in support of the defendants’ guilty pleas, from November...

OCALA, Fla. - Deandre Amaad Williams, 29 of Ocala, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for conspiring to distribute cocaine, heroin and fentanyl. Williams had pleaded guilty on July 19, 2019. According to court documents, between January 2012 and May 2019, Williams was a member of a conspiracy...

TAMPA, Fla. – A federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment charging David Burkes, 51, of Safety Harbor, with conspiring to distribute a substance that contained a mixture of fentanyl, and acetyl fentanyl, causing the death of one individual and the serious injury to another. If convicted, Burkes faces a...