A California man who used the mail to send dangerous drugs to Iowa has been sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison.
Tyler Vuong Le, a 28-year-old from Anaheim, California, received the prison term after a guilty plea to distribution of a controlled substance. In a plea agreement, Le admitted he mailed packages on multiple occasions from California to Iowa that were pressed to look like oxycodone pills, but instead contained other controlled substances including fentanyl.
Le believed the pills would be redistributed in Iowa. However, these items were being sent to an individual working with law enforcement, and the controlled substances, including over 5,900 of the counterfeit oxycodone pills, were seized by law enforcement before they could be redistributed.
According to the DEA, fentanyl is a potent synthetic opioid drug that is 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin. The DEA noted that fentanyl is a leading cause of overdose deaths in the United States.
Le was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Judge Leonard T. Strand. He was sentenced to 87 months’ imprisonment, and must also serve a 4-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.
Le is being held in the United States Marshal’s custody until he can be transported to a federal prison. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Emily K. Nydle and was investigated as part of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) program of the United States Department of Justice through a cooperative effort of the United States Postal Inspectors, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and a Federal Task Force composed of the Waterloo Police Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms assisted by the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office and Cedar Falls Police Department.
The case file number is 23-cr-2042, and court file information can be found at ecf.iand.uscourts.gov.
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Key Facts
- State: Iowa
- Agency: DOJ USAO
- Category: Drug Trafficking|Fraud & Financial Crimes|Violent Crime
- Source: Official Source ↗
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