A California man who acted as the leader for an Alaska drug trafficking organization was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A California man who acted as the leader for an Alaska drug trafficking organization was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison.
According to court documents, in spring 2022, Tyrone Hampton, 44, moved his pregnant wife and co-defendant, Stephanie Blanchard, 39, and fellow alleged gang members, Keith Crossley, 37, and Lawrence McGirt, 27, from Southern California to Alaska in 2022. Once in Alaska, Hampton and his co-conspirators began selling illegal drugs, primarily heroin and fentanyl. One of the locations Hampton used for drug trafficking was an apartment in Wasilla.
On April 12, 2022, the landlord of the apartment called law enforcement to trespass multiple people frequenting the apartment. A California man, Tyrone Hampton, 44, was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for leading a multi-state drug trafficking organization that targeted Alaska. Hampton’s main drug supplier was Kevyn Watson, 43, who was serving a 40-year prison sentence in Oklahoma.
He had access to multiple contraband cellphones in prison and used the phones to coordinate the multiple packages of drugs to Alaska through the mail. In April 2022, Hampton’s cousin, Charles Holyfield, 41, reached out to Hampton about a debt that Hampton owed him. During that conversation, the two men agreed to have Holyfield mail illegal fentanyl pills from a supplier in Arizona to Alaska to be sold for a high profit and split the proceeds together.
On April 25, 2022, Holyfield mailed over 2,500 fentanyl pills by stuffing them inside one of two pillows and packaging the pillows up in a box and addressing it to the Wasilla apartment building. Hampton ordered Blanchard to wire Holyfield $2,000 for the pills. The next day, UPS attempted to deliver Holyfield’s package to the apartment in Wasilla but could not because the label did not include an apartment number. UPS marked the package as “suspicious.
” They searched the package, found fentanyl pills and alerted the Alaska State Troopers. On the same day, Hampton directed Holyfield to board a flight to Alaska and picked him up from the airport. Hampton, Holyfield and Blanchard spent a night in a local motel. On April 27, Hampton, Blanchard and Holyfield drove from the motel to the Wasilla apartment and realized the package had not arrived yet.
That same day, troopers conducted a controlled delivery of the package with sham drugs and waited until Hampton, Holyfield, McGirt and Crossley returned to the building to execute a search warrant and arrest them. Troopers recovered the package inside a closet and found evidence of a makeshift methamphetamine lab in the apartment.2 drug busts ‘among the largest fentanyl seizures in Alaska history’ with more than $356,000 worth of drugs seized On April 28, UPS notified AST that they received another suspicious package destined for the Wasilla apartment.
Inside the package, troopers found a container with one kilogram of heroin wrapped in six levels of packaging. Prosecutors state that Watson and Hampton coordinated the shipment of this package, referring to the one kilogram of heroin as “the whole chalupa” in text messages. A California man, Tyrone Hampton, 44, was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for leading a multi-state drug trafficking organization that targeted Alaska.
Hampton directed two people to transfer $2,500 in drug proceeds via wire transfer to two individuals in California as partial payment to Watson for the shipment of heroin. Court documents explain that in just over six weeks, Hampton deposited more than $26,900 into his bank account via Cash App or ATM deposits. Prosecutors state that Hampton was earning more than $228,000 a year dealing drugs in Alaska and that he had no other legitimate source of income.
During sentencing, the judge ordered Hampton to spend 10 years on supervised release after serving his federal prison sentence. In handing down the sentence, the judge emphasized that Hampton was motivated by profit and preyed upon vulnerabilities to distribute fentanyl into Alaska.
“Mr. Hampton is a career criminal that moved his family and friends to Alaska for the sole purpose of peddling poison to our communities,” U.S. Attorney Michael J. Heyman for the District of Alaska said. “With no legitimate source or income, an extensive criminal history, gang membership, and a propensity to seek out crime, Mr. Hampton poses a significant risk to community safety.
Communities in both Alaska and California are safer knowing that this defendant will be behind bars for the next 15 years. ” The five co-defendants involved in this operation also pleaded guilty and received sentences ranging from time served to 15 years.
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Tyron Hampton Stephanie Blanchard Keith Crossley Lawrence Mcgirt
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