Shadows of Coralville were cast into darkness once again as Ashley Crystal Wachs, a 36-year-old woman from the town, was sentenced to seven years in federal prison for her role in the sinister trade of fentanyl. The grim tale unfolded on August 5, 2025, when Wachs received her severe punishment for the crime of Possession with Intent to Distribute Controlled Substances.
In a plea agreement that shed light on Wachs’s dark deeds, she confessed to transporting thousands of fentanyl pills from Seattle, Washington, into Coralville and its neighboring areas. The evidence was chilling: on September 4, 2024, Iowa State Patrol officers and Johnson County Drug Task Force agents stopped her vehicle, discovering over 250 grams of fentanyl, 109.58 grams of flurofentanyl, and 71.96 grams of ice methamphetamine. Wachs’s intent to distribute the majority of these deadly substances was made clear during her plea.
The sentence, handed down by United States District Court Chief Judge C.J. Williams in Cedar Rapids, mandates that Wachs serve 72 months’ imprisonment followed by a three-year term of supervised release. Federal law does not offer parole as an option for this hardened criminal.
Wachs remains in the custody of the United States Marshal until she is transported to a federal prison, where her sentence will begin. The case was meticulously prosecuted by Special Assistant United States Attorney Jared Manternach and investigated by the Johnson County Drug Task Force and Iowa State Patrol.
Court file information can be accessed at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl, with the case file number listed as 24-CR-98. The Grimy Times encourages readers to follow updates on this case and others through @USAO_NDIA on X (formerly Twitter).
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Key Facts
- State: Iowa
- Agency: DOJ USAO
- Category: Drug Trafficking|Fraud & Financial Crimes|Violent Crime|Sex Crimes|Cybercrime|Public Corruption|Weapons|Human Trafficking|White Collar Crime|Organized Crime
- Source: Official Source ↗
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