A man was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison for trafficking nearly a metric ton, or 956 kilograms, of cocaine.
“Brahmananda Prasad made millions by pumping poison into several states on the East Coast, Delaware included," U.S. Attorney Benjamin L. Wallace said in a statement. "But due to the dogged efforts of federal prosecutors and agents, Prasad will pay those millions back—and will spend more than two decades in prison to boot. This just sentence should send a message to other large-scale drug traffickers: if your product touches Delaware, we will find you and hold you accountable, even if you never once set foot in our State.”
Prasad was sentenced on May 29. In addition to a jail sentence of 275 months, the judge ordered Prasad to forfeit $2,495,500, representing the income he made from the distribution network.
According to court documents and evidence from prosecutors, since at least 2021, Prasad ran an operation that trafficked cocaine coast-to-coast under the guise of a legitimate shipping company. Prosecutors said he flew regularly from his home in Queens, New York, to California to meet with suppliers and purchase multiple kilograms of cocaine. He purchased between 20 and 24 kilos at a time from his suppliers, though he occasionally procured as much as 48 kilos in one trip.
Prasad then delegated others to act as company agents in order to evade detection, and shipped the drugs back to New York. From there, Prasad shipped the drugs in smaller but still multi-kilogram quantities to downstream distributors in New York and Maryland, and then moved it to sellers in Delaware and elsewhere along the East Coast.
Federal authorities, including Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), surveilled the drug network and analyzed flight and shipping records. They also conducted a nearly four-month wiretapping operation, and finally seized the drugs. The investigation revealed that the trafficking network had been moving drugs since at least 2021, and had moved at least 956 kilograms of cocaine—or roughly 2,105 pounds—in that time. The U.S. Attorney's Office said that the weight is six times the volume of drugs connected to any other defendant in the District in recent memory.
“This sentence sends a clear message to those who would attempt to profit from poisoning our communities with dangerous drugs,” Acting Special Agent in Charge of HSI Philadelphia Nathan Abel said. “We remain committed to holding traffickers accountable and protecting our neighborhoods from the devastating impact of narcotics distribution.”