A 35-year-old Gastonia man has been sentenced to 51 months in federal prison after admitting he sold fentanyl-laced pills and firearms, including to a confidential informant, in a case that began with a routine traffic stop in Shelby. Matthew Olando Allen will also serve three years of supervised release once his prison term ends.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of North Carolina, Allen was sentenced in Asheville after pleading guilty to distributing fentanyl and to possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. As Queen City News reports, the case traces back to a 2024 investigation into Allen for selling fentanyl-laced pills to a confidential informant.
The outlet's report details how Allen sold 14 fentanyl pills and a Bryco Arms Jennings firearm to that informant. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives led the broader investigation, while Shelby Police Department officers made the traffic stop that cracked the case open, stopping Allen's vehicle for a traffic violation, the outlet notes.
What Officers Found During the Traffic Stop
During that stop, law enforcement recovered a Canik 9mm pistol from Allen and found a Ruger SR22 firearm along with more fentanyl pills inside his vehicle, according to the same report. The case was prosecuted as part of Operation Take Back America, a designation cited in the Queen City News account of the sentencing.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Don Gast, of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Asheville, prosecuted the case, the report states. Allen's guilty pleas covered both the drug distribution charge and the firearm charge tied to furthering that trafficking, sealing a sentence that keeps him behind bars for well over four years before his supervised release begins.
A Statewide Overdose Crisis Behind the Case
Allen's sentencing lands amid a fentanyl crisis that continues to strain North Carolina. The state recorded an estimated 2,731 suspected overdose deaths in 2025, according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. Separately, the North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner reported that fentanyl-positive deaths fell from 169 in July 2024 to 122 in July 2025, a decrease of about 28%, per data published by the North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
The Allen case was part of Operation Take Back America. For Gastonia and surrounding Gaston County, the case underscores how a single traffic stop in nearby Shelby helped unwind a fentanyl and firearms pipeline that fed into that statewide toll.
