MAN SENTENCED FOR ASSISTING DRUG DEALER IN GUN PURCHASE
ANDREW LAROSE, age 55, a resident of Thibodeaux, Louisiana, was sentenced today by the Honorable Mary Ann Vial Lemmon to twenty-one (21) months in prison and two (2) years supervised release for making a false statement related to his purchase of a Glock .40 caliber handgun in 2009 for Mark Ross. Ross, a felon convicted of drug violations in the Eastern District of Louisiana in 2003, was arrested by federal agents in December 2009 after a year long investigation into his and his associates drug trafficking activities. The gun LAROSE purchased for Ross was traced back to LAROSE through the documents required to be kept by the firearms dealers. Those documents showed that LAROSE lied when he stated on the firearms forms that he was purchasing the gun for himself.
The case was investigated by DEA in collaboration with the Gulf Coast High Intensity Drug Trafficking Task Force (HIDTA) and the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF).
The HIDTA Task Force is led by DEA and includes a team of dedicated investigators from the New Orleans Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. OCDETF is an important program which targets the most significant drug trafficking organizations within the United States, as well as those outside of the United States borders that impact drug trafficking within the United States. The case was prosecuted by Emily K. Greenfield.
