Court Sentences Mobile Man to Five Years Imprisonment for Trafficking Fentanyl

On May 24, 2023, Senior United States District Court Judge Callie V. Granade sentenced Lavarance D. Nettles to 60 months imprisonment for conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute fentanyl. Nettles had previously plead guilty to the offense.

Documents filed with the Court in connection with Nettles’s guilty plea established that on September 3, 2020, the Mobile Police Department Tactical Intelligence Unit seized eighty-four pills from the defendant’s vehicle. The pills were tested and found to contain fentanyl. Officers also executed a search warrant at the defendant’s apartment in Mobile and found hundreds more fentanyl pills. Officers also located and seized $64,990.00 in cash at the apartment. The money was previously forfeited to the United States as drug proceeds in a separate civil forfeiture action filed in federal court.

United States Attorney Sean P. Costello praised the outstanding work of the federal and local law enforcement agencies in bringing this fentanyl trafficker to justice and forfeiting the illegal drug proceeds. Costello stated that the federal asset forfeiture statutes present a powerful tool in depriving criminals of their ill-gotten gains. The statutes also allow most of the forfeited assets to be used to fund law enforcement operations.
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The case was investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Mobile Police Department. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney George F. May.