Former Police Officer Sentenced To Almost Five Years For Dealing Oxycodone
TACOMA, WASH. - Bill Celeya Flores, 60, of Puyallup, Washington, was sentenced September 16, 2011, in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to 57 months in prison and three years of supervised release for illegally possessing and distributing oxycodone and possession of a firearm by an unlawful use of a controlled (methadone). Between October 2008, and August 2009, an undercover DEA agent purchased large quantities of oxycodone from Flores at his smoke shop, The Lil’ Red Smoke Shop in Tacoma, Washington.
In October 2009, Bill Celeya Flores and five others were arrested following a lengthy investigation of prescription drug dealing from the Indian Smoke Shop on Puyallup Tribal Trust Land in Milton, Washington and the Lil’ Red Smoke Shop on Tribal Trust Land in Tacoma, Washington. According to records filed in the case, an 18-month investigation by the Drug Enforcement (DEA) and the Federal Bureau of (FBI) revealed that Bill Celeya Flores and his son Billy Miranda Flores were selling thousands of pills of (oxycodone) and methadone from their smoke shops. When agents and officers searched the Lil’ Red Smoke Shop in October 2009, they found only 42 packs of cigarettes in the inventory. The profits at the shop were coming from the drug trade, not sales of cigarettes and sundries. During the course of the investigation agents and officers seized multiple firearms from Bill Celeya Flores. The Lil’ Red Smoke Shop has since been bulldozed by the Puyallup Tribe.
Bill Celeya Flores pleaded guilty in December 2010. Billy Miranda Flores and co-defendant Danny Lee Sherwood were convicted at trial in February 2011. Both are scheduled for sentencing next month.
This was an Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task (OCDETF) investigation, providing supplemental federal funding to the federal and state agencies involved. The lead investigative agencies were DEA and FBI, with assistance from a number of state and local law enforcement agencies.
