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Seattle – A Seattle-area man who was arrested for drug trafficking by multiple law enforcement agencies six times over a two-year period was sentenced this week in U.S. District Court in Seattle to ten years in prison, announced U.S. Attorney Nick Brown. Steven Eric Strauss, 56, was charged federally on May 5, 2022, with Unlawful Possession of a Firearm, Possession of Controlled Substances with Intent to Distribute and Possession of a Firearm in Furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. At the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge James L. Robart said Strauss “has the potential to return to what has been a life of crime…. I need to protect the community from that.”
According to records filed in the case, between January 2020 and March 2022, Strauss was investigated and arrested for drug trafficking by multiple law enforcement agencies. Those arrests and seizures include:
In asking for the ten-year sentence, Assistant United States Attorney Cecelia Gregson noted that Strauss has failed to reform following state prison sentences. “The defendant’s prior encounters with the criminal system also failed to deter or dissuade him from selling drugs and carrying firearms. A review of the defendant’s criminal history establishes that from the age of eighteen, the defendant has been in a revolving door of crime commission to prison admission,” AUSA Gregson wrote in her sentencing memo.
The case was investigated by the Washington State Patrol with assistance from the Seattle Police Department, Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office, Lynnwood Police, and Bellevue Police.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Cecelia Gregson.
Press contact for the U.S. Attorney’s Office is Communications Director Emily Langlie at (206) 553-4110 or Emily.Langlie@usdoj.gov.