United States Drug Enforcement Administration

PHILADELPHIA - Staff from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Philadelphia Field (PFD) distributed approximately 60 winter coats to the students of the Potter-Thomas Elementary School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Investigative (IA) Paula Martinez has organized this coat drive, as well as Red Ribbon Week activities, at the Potter-Thomas school for the past...

LAS VEGAS - A local doctor who sold prescriptions for pain medications to persons who did not have a medical necessity for them, and deposited the cash proceeds in a manner designed to avoid tax laws, has been sentenced to two years in prison, three years of supervised release, and...

PHILADELPHIA - Special Agent in Charge Gary Tuggle of the Drug Enforcement Administration’(DEA) Philadelphia Field Division announced today that the DEA will host a Prescription Drug Awareness (PDAC) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as part of the DEA’s ongoing 360 Strategy to address prescription opioid and heroin abuse in Western Pennsylvania. The...

SANTA ANA, Calif. - A Santa Barbara-area physician who wrote numerous prescriptions for powerful painkillers for “patients” - many of whom were drug addicts, and some of whom died from drug overdoses - was sentenced today to 327 months in federal prison by United States District Judge Cormac J. Carney...

PHILADELPHIA - Special Agent in Charge Gary Tuggle of the Drug Enforcement (DEA) Philadelphia Field Division announced today the publication of a statewide Drug Overdose Assessment for Pennsylvania. The report, entitled “Analysis of Drug-Related Overdose Deaths in Pennsylvania, 2014,” is the first comprehensive assessment of deaths caused by drugs for...

PHILADELPHIA - Special Agent in Charge Gary Tuggle of the Drug Enforcement Administration’(DEA) Philadelphia Field Division announced today that Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania will be the first city in the nation where the DEA will implement a new comprehensive strategy to address prescription opioid abuse, heroin use, and violent crime. A news...

LOS ANGELES - A Rowland Heights doctor was convicted today of three counts of second-degree murder for prescribing massive quantities of addictive and dangerous drugs to patients with no legitimate need, three of whom died of overdoses. A jury of ten women and two men found Hsiu Ying “Lisa” Tseng...

LAS VEGAS - Mahesh Kuthuru, M.D., 47, of Henderson, Nev. pleaded guilty today to unlawfully writing prescriptions for oxycodone and other highly addictive prescription painkillers, announced U.S. Attorney Daniel G. Bogden for the District of Nevada. Kuthuru, who was indicted in October 2014, pleaded guilty to one count of distribution...

PHILADELPHIA - Special Agent in (SAC) Gary Tuggle of the DEA Philadelphia Field Division was invited to speak with undergraduate students enrolled in a Comparative Politics course at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. These students have elected to spend their semester learning about the war on drugs and alternative approaches...

LOS ANGELES - Investigations led by the Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations in the Los Angeles area have resulted in the arrest of over a dozen defendants allegedly involved in the large-scale manufacture and distribution of synthetic drugs that are commonly called “spice.”...