SEATTLE – A Bothell, Washington, man is charged in an eight-count complaint for operating an illegal money exchange business involving bitcoin. Kenneth Warren Rhule, 26, made his initial appearance on the criminal complaint in U.S. District Court in Seattle on March 10, 2020. Rhule is charged with conducting an unlicensed...

SEATTLE -- A Skagit County resident who operated businesses in Burlington and Sedro Woolley, Washington was sentenced on Jan. 17, 2020, in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to 18 months in prison for his role in knowingly laundering cash drug proceeds for a drug cartel. Orlando Barajas, 41, owns and...

SEATTLE – Two Skagit County residents are charged in U.S. District Court in Seattle in connection with a drug distribution ring selling fake oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl in Whatcom and Skagit Counties. The pills are linked to the overdose death of a 17-year-old Bellingham teen. Rosaliana Lopez-Rodriguez, 21, of...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Michael Joseph Nicholson, 36, of Los Angeles, California, was sentenced on Oct. 8, 2019, by U.S. District Judge Timothy M. Burgess, to 10 years in prison, to be followed by a 5-year term of supervised release, for his role in a drug and money laundering conspiracy that...

SEATTLE - Three members of an international drug trafficking organization were sentenced on June 18, 2019, in U.S. District Court in Seattle to prison terms ranging from 24 to 32 months for distributing more than a thousand kilograms of illegal marijuana. The defendants pleaded guilty in March 2019, admitting in...

PORTLAND, Ore.—Osasuyi Kenneth Idumwonyi, 58, of Houston, Texas was sentenced on June 3, 2019, to 108 months in federal prison and three years’ supervised release for illegally distributing opioids. According to court documents, in January 2015, Idumwonyi along with codefendant and former nurse practitioner Julie Ann DeMille opened the Fusion...

PORTLAND, Ore.—Daniel Stewart Gregg, 67, of Ashland, Oregon, was sentenced on May 23, 2019, to 46 months in federal prison and two years’ supervised release for engaging in a conspiracy to traffic Oregon-grown marijuana across state lines. According to court documents, in 2015, Illinois law enforcement seized a 354 pound...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Two California men have been sentenced for their roles in a drug trafficking conspiracy to transport methamphetamine and heroin from the Lower 48 to Ketchikan for distribution. Arthur Castillo, 32, of Fresno, California, and Alfonso Francisco Sandoval, 32, of Clovis, California, were both sentenced in Juneau on...

PORTLAND, Ore.—In related criminal cases, Cole Williams Griffiths and Raleigh Dragon Lau pleaded guilty on April 22, 2019, for their roles in a conspiracy to traffic marijuana grown in Hood River, Oregon and Portland to Virginia, Texas, and Florida. Drug proceeds, in the form of bulk U.S. currency, were returned...