United States Drug Enforcement Administration

SEATTLE – The first of some 20 defendants charged with trafficking narcotics in Seattle’s homeless encampments and International District was sentenced on Wednesday in U.S. District Court to 30 months in prison, announced First Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Neil Floyd. Theodore Nation, 36, has been in custody since January 2025. At the sentencing hearing U.S. District Judge Tana Lin said, Nation had been dealing “to particularly vulnerable and marginalized members of the community.”

“This drug trafficking organization sold addictive substances to some of the most marginalized members of our community – those living in homeless encampments such as “The Jungle” under Interstate 5,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd. “This defendant made his living feeding the addiction of others making it ever more difficult for them to get out of the danger of homeless encampments.”

“In Seattle, our fight for a Fentanyl Free America is not abstract — it’s on the streets,” said Robert A. Saccone, Special Agent in Charge, DEA Seattle Field Division. “The fentanyl powder alone seized from this group contained more than 1.7 million potentially lethal doses.  Mr. Nation trafficked fentanyl and other deadly drugs in and around our homeless encampments and preyed on the most vulnerable in our community. The DEA, alongside our federal and local partners, is committed to using every enforcement tool at our disposal to shut down fentanyl supply chains, protect public safety, and save lives in Seattle and across the nation.”

“As a redistributor, Mr. Nation had a significant role in the Jungle Drug Trafficking Organization which sold dangerous drugs in the homeless encampments near the International District and I-5," said W. Mike Herrington, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Seattle field office. “This organization and others like it fuel the fentanyl crisis in the United States with drugs that all too often prove fatal. FBI Seattle remains committed to working with our partners to combat drug trafficking and violent crime in Seattle and across the state of Washington.”

According to records filed in the case, the investigation began in November 2023, with the Seattle Police, FBI, and DEA focusing on a drug trafficking organization dealing fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin in the homeless encampments of Seattle and in drug trafficking areas of the International District at locations such as 12th and Jackson. In the first round of arrests and indictments in January 2025, some of the defendants were arrested with firearms. Using a court authorized wiretap, investigators gathered evidence of the drug trafficking and made arrests and seizures over the course of the investigation. Law enforcement heard intimations of violence on the calls and worked to intervene without tipping off the targets of the investigation.

During the January arrest operation, law enforcement seized 17 firearms and 23 kilos of suspected fentanyl powder.

A second round of indictments and arrests occurred in late May 2025. In this part of the investigation, in March 2025 alone, law enforcement seized 100 pounds of methamphetamine, 111 kilos of cocaine, 19 kilos of fentanyl powder, 250,000 fentanyl pills, and four kilos of heroin. The street value of the narcotics was nearly $3 million.

In their sentencing memo asking for a 57-month sentence for Nation prosecutors noted the deadly toll of fentanyl. “According to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, 167 people died of fentanyl-involved overdoses in King County in 2020. By 2023, the number of fentanyl-involved overdoses in King County rose to 1,086.2 Although the number of fentanyl-involved overdoses peaked in 2023 in King County, in 2024 there were still 788 fentanyl-involved overdoses and in 2025 there were still 696 fentanyl-involved overdoses.”

The investigation was led by the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the Seattle Police Department with significant assistance from the Internal Revenue Service - Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI). Investigators also worked with the King County Sheriff’s Office and the Tukwila Police Department.

This investigation is part of the Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) initiative established by Executive Order 14159, Protecting the American People Against Invasion. The HSTF is a whole-of-government partnership dedicated to eliminating criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking rings operating in the United States and abroad. Through historic interagency collaboration, the HSTF directs the full might of United States law enforcement towards identifying, investigating, and prosecuting the full spectrum of crimes committed by these organizations, which have long fueled violence and instability within our borders. In performing this work, the HSTF places special emphasis on investigating and prosecuting those engaged in child trafficking or other crimes involving children. The HSTF further utilizes all available tools to prosecute and remove the most violent criminal aliens from the United States. HSTF Seattle comprises agents and officers from Homeland Security Investigations, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), The United States Marshals Service (USMS), the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigations (IRS-CI), the United States Secret Service (USSS), U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service, with the prosecution being led by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington.