SAN DIEGO – April Spring Kelly, of San Diego, was sentenced in federal court on Friday to 14 years in prison for conspiring to smuggle more than 450,000 fentanyl pills from Mexico into the United States during a nine-month period ending in October 2018. According to admissions in her plea...

SAN DIEGO – Orlando Balderas Guerrero, of Menifee, Calif., was sentenced in federal court today to 10 years in custody for participating in a conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. According to his plea agreement, Guerrero admitted that for a one-year period, he obtained bulk methamphetamine from a broker in Mexico and...

SAN DIEGO – The DEA and U.S. Coast Guard announced today a significant offload of drugs seized in international waters in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Agents with the DEA and the crew of the USCG Cutter Bertholf offloaded 18,000 pounds of cocaine – worth an estimated $312 million – at...

CINCINNATI – A federal grand jury has charged 36 individuals with crimes related to narcotics and money laundering conspiracies in an indictment that was unsealed today. Those charged include 22 local individuals. Law enforcement agents arrested all 36 defendants late last week and over the weekend. According to the indictment...

NEW YORK – On October 18, DEA Special Operations Division Special Agent in Charge Wendy C. Woolcock and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey S. Berman announced that on a jury returned a guilty verdict against Juan Antonio Hernández Alvarado, aka “Tony Hernández,” on all four...

SAN DIEGO – Eight indictments were unsealed today in San Diego federal court charging 85 members of drug distribution networks linked to the Sinaloa Cartel, with federal drug trafficking, money laundering and firearms offenses. During the coordinated takedown that began early this morning, investigators executed over a dozen search warrants...

SAN DIEGO -- Phillip Junior Webb, 20, was sentenced by District Court Judge Michael M. Anello in federal court today to 46 months in custody for conspiring to distribute controlled substances and smuggle undocumented individuals, including a Mexican national and Chinese national, for financial gain. According to the public record...

SAN DIEGO – Yesterday afternoon a federal jury convicted three defendants on charges stemming from their efforts to traffic approximately 734 kilograms (1,614 pounds) of cocaine -- worth nearly $17 million -- on the high seas. The verdict was rendered after a 10-day trial in the United States District Court...

CORONADO, Calif. – On July 11, 2019, Vice President Mike Pence, Office of National Drug Control Policy Director James W. Carroll, Drug Enforcement Administration Acting Administrator Uttam Dhillon, and Vice Admiral Linda Fagan, commander of Coast Guard Pacific Area, attended a United States Coast Guard drug offload at Naval Base...

SAN DIEGO – Willian Estuardo Lemus Lara, a suspected high-level cartel boss from Central America, was arraigned in federal court today on maritime cocaine trafficking charges. According to the documents filed in court, Lemus was the manager of the transportation and distribution cell responsible for facilitating multi-ton quantity cocaine loads...