A young Fresno County resident, Lakota Tehya Wakley, aged 21, has entered a guilty plea for the charge of conspiracy to distribute fentanyl, a synthetic opioid pain reliever that is far more potent than heroin, as per the Acting U.S. Attorney Michele Beckwith's announcement. According to the official report from the U.S. Attorney's Office, the investigation that led to Wakley's admission of guilt originated from a fentanyl-overdose fatality that occurred in Fresno.
The court documents reveal that between November 18, 2024, and December 9, 2024, Wakley conspired with 53-year-old Austin Lloyd Kerns of Fresno and others in a drug distribution operation that proved lethal, on November 23, 2024, it was Wakley who connected the overdose victim with Kerns to purchase fentanyl pills, and over the next two days the victim made multiple purchases of fentanyl pills from Kerns, resulting in a fatal overdose shortly after. Wakley reportedly received payment for facilitating the connection between the victim and Kerns, obtained by the U.S. Attorney's Office press release.
The concerted efforts to bring this case to light were handled by the Fentanyl Overdose Resolution Team (FORT), a collaborative team which includes members from Homeland Security Investigations, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Fresno and Clovis Police Departments; Assistant U.S. Attorneys Calvin Lee and Arin C. Heinz are in charge of the prosecution. Kerns is still awaiting his own reckoning in court, with a status conference penned for March 26, before Magistrate Judge Barbara A. McAuliffe, with his charges still pending he remains presumed innocent until if proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, as reported by the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Wakley faces a potential maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and is scheduled for sentencing on June 23, by U.S. District Judge Kirk E. Sherriff; nonetheless, the final sentencing will be influenced by statutory factors along with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which consider a range of variables, to determine an appropriate sentence, the U.S. Attorney's Office press release reported. This incident is a part of a broad sweep under Operation Synthetic Opioid Surge (S.O.S.), an initiative created by the Justice Department in July 2018 aimed at curtailing the spread of deadly synthetic opioids and illuminating the networks that supply them.
