Kelo White, Opioid Trafficking, California 2026

Fresno Man Sentenced to 7.5 Years in Prison for Conspiring to Traffic Opioid Pills

A Fresno man has been sentenced to 7 years and 6 months in prison for his role in conspiring to traffic hundreds of thousands of opioid pills, Acting U.S. Attorney Kimberly A. Sanchez announced.

Kelo White, 44, of Fresno, was sentenced today for illegally distributing oxycodone and hydrocodone pills, according to court records. The pills were obtained based on fraudulent prescriptions that were filled by their co-conspirator, Ifeanyi Vincent Ntukogu, 49, of Fresno, who was a pharmacist in Madera.

From 2014 through 2018, White and Donald Ray Pierre, 56, of Fresno, obtained more than 450,000 oxycodone and hydrocodone pills based on the forged prescriptions. White was responsible for more than 250,000 of those pills. The prescriptions were purportedly from more than 10 different doctors whose signatures had been forged.

White and Pierre had Ntukogu review each prescription before he filled it to ensure that government regulators would not deem it suspicious. For example, Ntukogu reviewed and rejected prescriptions that were supposedly written by certain doctors or that were written for individuals who were having prescriptions filled at other pharmacies because he believed those prescriptions may raise red flags.

White and Pierre paid Ntukogu in cash, and then they sold the pills for a significant profit. Ntukogu was sentenced on Nov. 25, 2024, to 7 years and 3 months in prison. Pierre was sentenced on July 21, 2020, to 9 years and 4 months in prison.

This case was the product of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the California Department of Health Care Services. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Antonio Pataca and Joseph Barton prosecuted the case.

The case was investigated under the DOJ’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), which identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest-level criminal organizations that threaten the United States using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach.

This case was also part of the DOJ’s Operation Synthetic Opioid Surge, which is a program designed to reduce the supply of deadly synthetic opioids in high-impact areas as well as identifying wholesale distribution networks and international and domestic suppliers.

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