Date: February 1, 2023 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Erie, PA — A former resident of Erie, Pennsylvania, has been sentenced in federal court to 10 years on his conviction of violating federal narcotics laws, United States Attorney Cindy K. Chung announced today. United States District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter imposed the sentence on Vincent Andrew Feliciano. According to information presented to the court, Feliciano and others engaged in a conspiracy to distribute multikilogram quantities of cocaine, approximately 1.7 kilograms of blue fentanyl pills (an estimated 15,000 pills), and methamphetamine within the Western District of Pennsylvania from in and around February 2022 and continuing thereafter to in or around May 2022. During this time, Vincent Feliciano traveled from Pennsylvania to Arizona to facilitate his criminal enterprise involving the distribution of illegal narcotics in Pennsylvania including four hundred grams or more of fentanyl. Assistant United States Attorney Paul S. Sellers prosecuted this case on behalf of the government. Assistant United States Attorney Sellers highlighted the dramatic rise, in recent years, of the trafficking of blue fentanyl pills, the increased potency and lethality of these pills, and the high profit margins enjoyed by drug distributors on the sale of fentanyl. This prosecution is a result of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) investigation. OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles high-level drug traffickers, money launderers, gangs, and transnational criminal organizations that threaten communities throughout the United States. OCDETF uses a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multiagency approach that leverages the strengths of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies against criminal networks. United States Attorney Chung commended the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Erie Area Gang Law Enforcement (EAGLE), Safe Streets Task Force, which is comprised of investigators from the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation, the FBI, the Erie Police Department, the Pennsylvania State Police, the Oil City Police Department, the Titusville Police Department, the Franklin Police Department, and the United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General, in coordination with the United States Postal Inspection Service, the Erie County Detectives, and the Millcreek Police Department for the investigation leading to the successful prosecution of Feliciano. The investigation was also conducted in association with the Northwest Pennsylvania Drug Initiative which was formed following Erie County's designation as a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) in 2021. The HIDTA program was created by Congress in 1988 to coordinate and assist Federal, State, and Local law enforcement agencies in addressing regional drug threats with the purpose of reducing drug trafficking and drug production in the United States. The Northwest Pennsylvania Drug Initiative coordinates personnel and resources between multiple agencies including the Pennsylvania State Police, Federal Burau of Investigation, Erie Police Department, Erie County District Attorney's office, Erie County Detectives, United States Postal Inspection Service, the EAGLE Task Force, and other participating agencies.
