LAFAYETTE — The U.S. Department of Justice announced today the arrest and conviction of an Alexandria man on drug trafficking charges from a 2017 postal package incident involving 18 pounds of meth.
Derrick Felton, 43,has been sentenced by United States District Judge Jay Zainey to 188 months in prison, followed by 5 years of supervised release, on those charges.
Felton was charged in an indictment on July 13, 2018 following an investigation by agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into suspicious packages that were detected by a postal employee delivering mail in November 2017.
The packages had been shipped from Los Angeles, California to an address in the Western District of Louisiana, they say, and one of the packages had a torn bottom.
Upon inspection, they say the postal employee discovered what appeared to be bags of methamphetamine inside the package.
Law enforcement agents with the FBI were contacted and a drug dog alerted on each of
the three packages.
A search warrant was then obtained for the packages.
During execution of the search warrant, agents found inside each package a combined 18 pounds of methamphetamine.
Inside the boxes, the methamphetamine was surrounded by cooking pans.
Agents analyzed the cooking pans and found Felton’s fingerprints on two of the pans.
Felton pleaded guilty on August 24 of this year and acknowledged that he facilitated the delivery of the 18 pounds of methamphetamine to the Western District of Louisiana.
A laboratory analysis of the substance inside the boxes was determined to contain approximately 8 kilograms of a mixture or substance methamphetamine.
The FBI and U.S. Postal Service investigated the case and Assistant U.S. Attorneys
John W. Nickel and Robert C. Abendroth prosecuted the case.
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