Crime & Courts

Former Ketchikan man gets 10 years for trafficking meth

A former Ketchikan resident was sentenced Monday in Juneau federal court to 10 years in prison for his part in shipments of methamphetamine to the Southeast Alaska town from Las Vegas.

Alexander Barcena Singson, 62, received the decade-long prison term as well as five years of supervised release, according to the U.S. District Attorney's Office. He had pleaded guilty on April 6 to a single drug trafficking conspiracy count.

Singson played a central role in the drug trafficking, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack Schmidt. A large number of the packages intercepted by authorities were associated with Singson, Schmidt said.

He was the last defendant associated with the trafficking to be sentenced, with his co-conspirators getting 40 to 84 months behind bars, Schmidt said.

Singson and others were accused of transporting the meth from Las Vegas to Ketchikan between October 2011 and September 2012, prosecutors said. The group used the Postal Service's commercial package services to get the drugs to Ketchikan, where they would be split up, they said.

"Co-conspirators then took those drug proceeds on their persons using commercial airlines, used wire transfers and personal accounts of Singson and others to pay for more methamphetamine for subsequent distribution," the U.S. District Attorney's Office said in a press release.

Police seized packages containing nearly a pound of meth during the investigation, prosecutors said.

Jerzy Shedlock

Jerzy Shedlock is a former reporter for Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2017.

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