logo
Sanford man gets 11 years for fentanyl, meth distriubtion

Sanford man gets 11 years for fentanyl, meth distriubtion

Yahoo23-04-2025
GREENSBORO — A Sanford man was sentenced Thursday, April 17, to more than 11 years in prison after pleading guilty to distribution of fentanyl, methamphetamine and other crimes.
Antwan Lopez Clemons, 45, was sentenced to 135 months by U.S. District Court Judge Loretta C. Biggs and ordered to five years of supervised probation upon his release.
Clemons was also ordered to forfeit a Winchester Double Star 5.56 rifle and a Smith & Wesson 9 mm handgun.
According to court records, on seven occasions between Feb. 16 and April 2, 2024, Clemons sold fentanyl to a confidential informant in Lee County, totaling 712.85 grams of fentanyl.
On two occasions in March 2024, he also sold a total of over 200 grams of methamphetamine to a confidential informant in Harnett County, a release states.
A search of two properties associated with Clemons yielded another 1,638 grams of meth, 4 grams of fentanyl, 7 grams of cocaine, 73 dosage units of Suboxone, 125.7 grams of M522 pills and 2,073 grams of marijuana, as well as the rifle and a handgun.
Clemons pleaded guilty to the charges on Oct. 9, 2024.
The case was investigated by the Sanford Police, Homeland Security, Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The prosecutor was Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Jeanne Dildine.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Letters: Ignition Interlock Device might have saved 10-year-old's life
Letters: Ignition Interlock Device might have saved 10-year-old's life

San Francisco Chronicle​

time13 hours ago

  • San Francisco Chronicle​

Letters: Ignition Interlock Device might have saved 10-year-old's life

Regarding ' Father charged with murder after 10-year-old son dies in Wine Country crash ' (Bay Area/Crime, July 23), what a shameful and sad article I woke up to the other day. A man, who had already been convicted of 2 DUIs, was allowed by the state to go out and kill his child. That's right. The state of California felt that a person with 2 DUIs should be allowed to continue driving. His child would still be alive today if California made it mandatory that this individual had a Ignition Interlock Device (IDD) installed on his vehicle. The state does force some people with DUIs to install them but apparently not in this case. My other big problem is why doesn't the state make it mandatory that every car have one? As many as 1,069 people die each year in California each year because of DUI drivers. The cost to install an IDD would be about $400. Seems like such a small amount of money to save so many innocent lives. So, again, why have our political leaders done nothing to solve this problem? One answer could be the amount of money the state takes in on DUI convictions. I wish I could tell you how much but apparently the state doesn't report how much that is but since there are about 96,000 DUI arrests per year at say $5,000 per conviction (and this I'm sure is a low estimate) that's a half a billion in revenue. So shameful and sad. Roger Lema, Castro Valley Regarding 'Reports: Palestinian activist previously detained at SFO killed in West Bank' (Bay Area/San Francisco, July 28), I never got to meet Awdah Hathaleen. The nonviolent Palestinian teacher, father and filmmaker was murdered last week by an Israeli colonizer while protecting his home from destruction by Jewish 'settlers.' I had wanted to see him. I bought tickets in June and waited to hear him at an event in Oakland, but the Trump administration wouldn't let him speak. He was held at SFO for over 24 hours, then called a 'security risk' and was returned to Palestine. Despite undisputed video of the alleged killer's shooting at Palestinians, he was released after a day and will probably face no charges. How striking that America and Israel collude to frame nonviolent Palestinians as terrorists. They deny us the right to hear their voices. They kill them when they try to defend their land. I beg readers to call Congress and the White House and demand we stop arming and funding Israel's mass slaughter in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. Tell your friends to speak out, too. David Spero, San Francisco Unreal responses A liberal from Danville supports Smith's ask to billionaires without challenging the nearly total loss of governmental authority over the privatized concentrated power of our nation's social wealth. A conservative from Clovis absurdly calls Smith's ideas socialist, though she doesn't even call for enforcing existing capitalism's tax rates on the wealthy and corporations (which most avoid). A third writer from Livermore finds that taxes are only wasted or sequestered by bureaucrats, so why even bother with having government (even though, for example, the 'bureaucratic' cost of running Medicare is about 2% while that of running private health insurance is upwards of 20%). While we're on wishful thinking, each of these writers, including Sarah Smith, might sit down and read the Open Forum ' Why Murdoch will cave to Trump ' on the same page above the letters. The realities in Aron Solomon's piece reveal the unreality of each of these letters. Marc Sapir, Berkeley Regarding ' S.F. may soon ban natural gas in homes and businesses undergoing major renovations ' (Bay Area/San Francisco, July 26), transitioning San Francisco away from natural gas towards electrified heating is a critical step in bringing our city into 2025 in terms of climate policy. Though cutting red tape is important and extremely in vogue in the Democratic Party, this is an instance where a little red tape can save a lot of greenhouse gases.

To dodge federal rule, immigrants moved from Florida jails - and sometimes moved right back
To dodge federal rule, immigrants moved from Florida jails - and sometimes moved right back

Miami Herald

timea day ago

  • Miami Herald

To dodge federal rule, immigrants moved from Florida jails - and sometimes moved right back

ORLANDO, Fla. - Four Guatemalan siblings, detained as undocumented immigrants after a traffic stop, spent several days last month at the Orange County Jail before being picked up in a van and driven around for hours. Finally they reached their destination, their attorneys say: Right back at the Orange County Jail. This directionless odyssey - similar to what some other detainees across Florida have faced in recent months – happened because of rules limiting the number of days an undocumented immigrant can be held in a local facility before federal officials must take custody. With the Trump administration's push for "mass deportation" filling federal detention beds, detainees are being transferred from facility to facility because the switch restarts the clock and gives federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents more time to pick them up. Multiple immigration attorneys described the shuffle to the Orlando Sentinel, and law enforcement leaders in Orange and Pinellas County confirmed the practice. But the attorneys say it's a maddening tactic that often leaves them struggling to locate the immigrants, and denies detainees access to family members and due process. Even though his clients - three brothers and a sister - wound up in the same place they started from, Orlando-based immigration attorney Walker Smith said he couldn't find the siblings because their previous inmate numbers were changed upon their return, leaving him and their family unsure of their whereabouts. He said the two youngest siblings in the family, 26 and 18, had valid work permits. "If they're just holding people indefinitely, holding people by sending them from facility to facility, or worse, sending them out of one facility and back to the same one under a different number … It's gaming the system at its finest," Smith said. The youngest brother has since been moved again - this time to Alligator Alcatraz, the state's new detention center in the Everglades. The way a detained immigrant's custody clock works is complicated. Under the Intergovernmental Service Agreement, or IGSA, that governs the relationships between ICE and the handful of Florida jails like Orange County's that temporarily hold detainees, undocumented immigrants without criminal charges can be held up to 72 hours before ICE must come to pick them up. But if the immigrant is arrested for a separate criminal offense, the 72-hour clock may not start until the other offense is charged or dropped - for all arrestees, state law prescribes a two-day time limit for that - or bail is granted and paid. "After the 72-hour period is up, there's no more authority for whatever agency or jail or entity to continue to hold those people," Smith said. "So . . . they should be released." And prior to the Trump administration, immigrants with an ICE hold often were released if time expired with no action. Now, some of them are simply relocated, whether to a different jail, or for a brief ride. It remains unclear how often the scenario occurs. In a July 15 meeting of the Board of County Commissioners, Orange Corrections Chief Louis Quiñones described a shuffle involving "a large amount of individuals" in early July. He was responding to questions from Commissioner Maribel Gomez Cordero, who had been told about the practice by advocates pressuring commissioners to terminate the IGSA with ICE. "Right around the [July 4] holiday, we had a large amount of individuals who were reaching the 72 hours and ICE had to come get those individuals and they were going to attempt to send them to another location," he said. "That did not go as they had planned, so they brought them back to Orange County Corrections." One reason the issue irks some county officials is that it costs about $145 per day to keep somebody in the jail, and the federal government only reimburses Orange County about $88 per day to house detainees. Shuffling people in and out of the jail prolongs their stay and runs up the bill. The county is in the midst of trying to renegotiate its agreement with ICE for a better reimbursement rate, but so far hasn't come to a deal. Quiñones didn't say how many people were impacted by the transfer, and the county didn't make him available for a requested interview with the Orlando Sentinel. But Smith said he was skeptical of Quiñones' description. "He tried to make it seem like it was a one-off," Smith said. "So I was very intrigued that the [Guatemalan] guy that I went to go talk to had also encountered the same situation." Danny Banks, the county's Public Safety Director, also said the shuffle has occurred only as "an isolated incident" so far. "Largely, ICE has been transporting their inmates within the 72-hour timeframe indicated in the IGSA agreement," he said in a text message. However, the Orlando Sentinel has been told of multiple other instances. One of the most elaborate involved Cuban native Michael Borrego Fernandez, who was transported to multiple different facilities before ending up at Alligator Alcatraz, where he has been since July 5. In June, Borrego Fernandez was arrested for violating his release terms after being charged with grand theft for bilking homeowners to pay for swimming pools up front but not finishing the work, which his mother Yaneisy Fernandez Silva said was because he "unwittingly" worked for a businessman operating the scam. Borrego Fernandez, who lived in South Florida, was taken to the Seminole County Jail to serve ten days in jail, she said. Following the completion of his sentence, he was taken to Orange County Jail on an ICE hold, then three days later shuttled to Pinellas County Jail. Three days after that, he was again transported back to Orange County Jail, his mother said. Roughly four days later he called his mother saying he had reached Alligator Alcatraz. Only his calls offered clues that let Fernandez Silva search for her son in jail databases, she said. "It's clear what the counties are doing, they're trying to create a legal loophole to a constitutional obligation to not hold people for more than the 72 hours," said Mich Gonzalez, a South Florida-based immigration attorney who called the transfers "alarming." Gonzalez said conditions for inmates who move around are different than for those housed in a single jail. "They're shackled, they're handcuffed, sometimes they're also waist-chained," Gonzalez said. "They're not provided proper food like when they're in custody at a county jail, where there are … general rules that you're going to get three meals a day and access to water. But when you're being transported and transferred, that goes out the window." In June, a Mexican man was arrested while his boss, a U.S. citizen, was driving him and his brother to a construction site. Both were passengers in the car and both had permits to work in the U.S., said the wife of one of the brothers. She spoke with the Sentinel on the condition of anonymity as she worries her comments could make her a target of immigration authorities. For weeks after her husband's arrest she did not know where he was. He would call from an Orange County number but he did not appear in the correction system's database. He told his wife he was put into a van and taken somewhere, but returned the next day to Orange County Jail. "I didn't hear from him for three days … I was so scared," She said in Spanish. "He spent so much time in Orange County Jail that when he returned he knew it was the same place." Advocates for the family met with officials at Orange County Corrections in early July to help find him. Six hours later, he was finally located in a county jail cell, they said. He had been given a different inmate number upon his return, which contributed to the confusion. Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri confirmed there has been some shuffling involving his facility but defended it, saying it stems from "a capacity issue" that can prevent detention centers from accepting detainees when their 72-hour clock ticks down. "If the transportation system is overloaded or there's no room at Krome … that's when it backs up and they have to put them into the IGSA jails" such as Orange, Gualtieri said. Gualtieri serves on Florida's Immigration Enforcement Council, which has sounded an alarm that federal detention space can't keep up with the pace at which Florida law enforcement agencies are arresting undocumented immigrants. The board has called on the federal government to allow more local jails to house detainees, rather than send them to the seven jails in Florida with IGSA agreements while they await ICE detention. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.

Beijing Pays Influencers in Africa to Spread Anti-US Messaging
Beijing Pays Influencers in Africa to Spread Anti-US Messaging

Epoch Times

time2 days ago

  • Epoch Times

Beijing Pays Influencers in Africa to Spread Anti-US Messaging

By | Updated: JOHANNESBURG—Chinese and Russian agents are paying social media influencers in Africa to spread anti-U.S. messages worldwide, with the Trump administration being a top target, media experts say. Their research reveals that many influencers who use the TikTok platform are earning hundreds to thousands of dollars per month by disseminating misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda that benefits Beijing and Moscow. AD

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store