TWO MEN SENTENCED FOR DRUG CONSPIRACY AND MONEY LAUNDERING

Gregory Frank Sperow, 58, of Los Angeles, California, was sentenced last Thursday by Chief U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise, Idaho, for conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and conspiracy to launder drug proceeds. Sperow was sentenced to 181 months in federal prison. Upon release from prison, he will be on supervised release for ten years. Sperow will also forfeit cash, properties, and property interests located in California, Colorado, Oregon and Hawaii totaling $11 million, which reflects property illegally obtained by Sperow and property involved in his criminal activity. Sperow pled guilty to the charges in September 2008.

A co-defendant of Sperow, Mark Daniel Kitzman, 52, of Lake Oswego, Oregon, was sentenced on Monday to 78 months in federal prison by Judge Winmill for conspiracy to distribute marijuana and conspiracy to launder drug proceeds. Following his prison term, Kitzman will be on supervised release for five years. Kitzman will also forfeit his interests in business, bank and investment accounts, real property in Portland, Bend, Lake Oswego, Eugene, Roseburg and Government Camp, Oregon, Pend Oreille County, Washington, and Kihei, Hawaii, as well as boats, vehicles and other personal property, with total assessed values of over $1 million. Kitzman pled guilty to the charges in December 2007.

Sperow and Kitzman were co-defendants in the Kent Jones case. Sperow was one of Jones’ sources of supply for marijuana over a period of several decades. In sentencing Sperow, Judge Winmill described the case as a “massive criminal enterprise” and noted that Sperow had a “complete lack of respect for the law.”

Sperow began his criminal career in the mid 1970s when he was caught smuggling 1,330 pounds of marijuana into the United States for which he was convicted and sentenced to federal prison. Shortly after his release, Sperow became involved in smuggling marijuana into the United States from South America and Mexico. In March 1981, Sperow was again sentenced to prison. In the mid 1990s, it was discovered that Sperow was involved in large-scale methamphetamine manufacturing. In 1996, he was identified as the supplier of multi-hundred pound shipments of marijuana sent from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon, Cleveland, Ohio and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Shortly after Sperow attempted to retrieve 200 pounds of marijuana from the Portland airport in January 1996, Sperow became a fugitive on federal drug trafficking charges out of the District of Oregon. After eight years of being a fugitive, Sperow was apprehended near Orinda, California in May 2004. He was subsequently tried and convicted in Oregon and sentenced to five years in prison. In June 2006, Sperow was indicted in Idaho for his role in a 30 year drug conspiracy with Kent Jones and many others, including Mark Kitzman.

Sperow’s 15 year sentence was in addition to the five years already served in the Oregon case.

Fourteen other defendants have already been sentenced in the Idaho case so far. Two additional defendants will be sentenced in the next few months.

The Jones organization, which had been identified as a Regional Priority Target by the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), operated throughout the United States, importing drugs from Mexico and Southern California. The drugs were typically transported to the Portland, Oregon area before being shipped to Idaho, Washington, and other places in the mid-west and east coast, including the states of Colorado, Ohio, North Dakota, Nebraska, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Jersey, and New York. In addition to the importation and transportation of marijuana, the group was heavily involved in growing large quantities of marijuana in Oregon in the 1990s, both indoors and on public lands.

The organization allegedly had its origins in a group of high school friends from Days Creek, Oregon, with other friends and family members added over the years. The group’s early activities centered around growing and selling marijuana, but they later expanded to include smuggling large quantities of drugs from Mexico and Southern California.

The OCDETF investigation was handled by the District of Idaho because it stemmed from the case of a major drug trafficker, Leland Lang of Stites, Idaho, who was successfully prosecuted in Idaho in 2002. The Jones organization supplied Lang with large quantities of drugs which were distributed in Idaho and various mid-west and eastern states. Over one million dollars in currency was seized from Lang’s mountaintop residence in Stites in 2002. Lang is currently serving a 9.5 year sentence in federal prison.

U.S. Attorney Tom Moss said, “This was a major investigation of a highly organized, sophisticated drug trafficking operation that persisted in its criminal activities despite numerous arrests and seizures over a period of decades. This was not a run-of-the-mill group of criminals. Their crimes included importation of drugs from foreign sources, indoor marijuana grows, marijuana manufacturing on public lands, methamphetamine manufacturing, a nationwide drug distribution network, and the corruption of businesses through the investment of criminal drug proceeds. The prosecution of these major traffickers in the District of Idaho is a testament to the dedication of numerous law enforcement agencies working together to ensure that justice was done.”

Moss also stated, “The Jones investigation was significant because it combined decades of evidence from multiple jurisdictions and brought charges against an incorrigible group of smugglers, transporters, wholesalers, distributors and money launderers whose criminal activities generated tens of millions of dollars in criminal proceeds. This criminal enterprise was brought down through the persistence and hard work of many dedicated law enforcement professionals in Idaho, Oregon and elsewhere.”

"Our agency has been involved in this lengthy investigation since its inception and are very pleased to see justice done,” said Kevin Johnson, Lieutenant Colonel with the Idaho State Police. "We were fortunate to have worked with such a dedicated group of professionals from many different agencies and Assistant United States Attorneys Monte Stiles and Tony Hall, tenacious advocates of justice, who were crucial to the successful outcome of the case.”

Agencies involved in the investigation and arrests include IRS Criminal Investigation Division, the Idaho State Police, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Douglas County Interagency Narcotics Team, Oregon Department of Justice, Oregon State Police, the U.S. Marshals Service, Westside Interagency Narcotics Team, the Bonner County Sheriff’s Office, Pacific Northwest Fugitive Task Force and Southwest Washington Regional SWAT Team. The OCDETF program is a federal multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional task force which supplies supplemental federal funding to federal and state agencies involved in the identification, investigation, and prosecution of major drug trafficking organizations.