SAN DIEGO - This Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. local time, DEA and its law enforcement and community partners will give the public another opportunity to prevent pill abuse and theft by ridding their homes of potentially dangerous expired, unused, and unwanted prescription drugs. On Saturday, September 26th...

CHINO, Calif. - A two month gang related drug-trafficking investigation came to a successful conclusion afterofficers served four search warrants Wednesday, resulting in seven arrests. The investigation, known as “Operation Checkmate,” began in July of this year through the collaborative efforts of the Chino Police Department and the Drug Enforcement...

LOS ANGELES - A Baldwin Park man and former 18th Street gang member pleaded guilty to a federal drug trafficking offense and admitted he was the triggerman in the previously unsolved 2006 murder of a person who had failed to pay “taxes” to a member of the Mexican Mafia. Eddie...

LAS VEGAS - U.S. District Judge Larry R. Hicks sentenced a Reno man to 12½ years in prison and five years of supervised release following his arrest and conviction for possessing approximately one kilogram of pure methamphetamine in his vehicle. Francisco Fuentes Ibarra, 35, pleaded guilty in May to one...

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 overdose - was convicted today of 79 federal drug trafficking charges. Julio Gabriel Diaz, 67, a Goleta resident who...

SAN DIEGO - Evelio Padilla-Zepeda, a Honduran national, pleaded guilty in federal court today, admitting that he donned a wetsuit and scuba gear and smuggled 55 pounds of cocaine through an underwater drug tunnel that exited into the All-American Canal just north of the international border. Padilla-Zepeda entered his plea...

LOS ANGELES - One of the principal cocaine traffickers associated with an international narcotics ring was sentenced this morning to 20 years in federal prison. Zaid Wakil, 43, of Winston Salem, North Carolina, was sentenced by United States District Judge George H. Wu for his role in acquiring more than...

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. - United States District Judge Derrick K. Watson sentenced Serafine Magallon, 41, to 225 months imprisonment for conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute more than 500 grams of methamphetamine. In sentencing Magallon, a San Jose, California resident, Judge Watson found that he held...

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. - After an investigation that began in November 2014, members of the DEA Ventura Resident Office and San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Narcotics Unit shut down a major cocaine distribution organization that was operating in and around San Luis Obispo County. Investigators served search warrants over...

LOS ANGELES - A man linked to one of the most notorious organized crime rings in Israel and who on his own operated “a vast international criminal conspiracy engaged in drug trafficking and money laundering” was sentenced today to 384 months in federal prison. Matsri was found guilty by a...