News and reports from the Department of Justice.

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that Al-Salaam I. Hale, age 46, of Hanover Township, Pennsylvania, was sentenced to 60 months in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Malachy E. Mannion, for distributing heroin.

Earlier today, in federal court in Central Islip, Nelson Argueta-Quintanilla, also known as “Mendigo”, a member of the violent transnational criminal organization La Mara Salvatrucha, also known as the “MS-13,” was sentenced by United States District Judge Gary R. Brown to 327 months in prison for his role in the murder of Oscar Acosta, whose body was found on the grounds of an abandoned psychiatric hospital in Brentwood, and a subsequent attempt to shoot and kill rival gang members on Lukens Avenue in Brentwood.

After a two-week jury trial, a federal jury in Honolulu, Hawaii, found defendants Kaulana Alo-Kaonohi, 32, and Levi Aki Jr., 33, guilty of a hate crime for their racially motivated attacks on C.K., a white man who was attempting to move into their Native Hawaiian neighborhood of Kahakuloa on Maui.

An Iowa nurse who stole fentanyl from elderly patients pled guilty on November 21, 2022, in federal court in Sioux City. Ryan William Thornton, age 27, from Clear Lake, Iowa, was convicted of acquiring fentanyl by misrepresentation, fraud, deception, and subterfuge.