A federal jury convicted Raleigh man Isiah Naaquan Weeks on 14 federal counts tied to a fentanyl trafficking and firearms operation that authorities say moved hundreds of thousands of pills from California and Arizona into Wake County. Jurors reached their verdicts after a three-day trial, finding Weeks guilty on nine fentanyl-trafficking counts and five firearms-possession counts while acquitting him on a single count. U.S. District Judge James C. Dever III accepted the jury's decision and has scheduled sentencing for October 19 in Raleigh.
According to The Enterprise, prosecutors say Weeks and his associates traveled across the country to obtain large quantities of fentanyl, then arranged for the pills to be transported into Wake County for distribution around Raleigh. U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle, who announced the verdict, said Weeks had a long history of distributing fentanyl and returned to drug trafficking after being incarcerated. The operation, which prosecutors say involved high-volume shipments and coordinated communications, reportedly began in 2022 and continued until Weeks' arrest in 2024.
An Operation That Kept Running Despite Arrests
Court testimony described an operation that didn't stop even as it started drawing law enforcement attention. Weeks allegedly continued distributing fentanyl after one of his associates was arrested carrying 100,000 fentanyl pills, according to prosecutors. Investigators say Weeks regularly carried firearms in connection with his drug-trafficking activities, which formed the basis for the five gun counts layered on top of the trafficking charges.
Prosecutors also told jurors that Weeks searched online for “no extradition countries” and for the “best place to live for americans in mexico,” according to the same reporting. Alicia Jones, special agent in charge of the Charlotte Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said holding a drug dealer accountable sends a powerful message to people who threaten public safety. The case was investigated jointly by the ATF, the Raleigh Police Department, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and IRS Criminal Investigation, and it was handled as part of Operation Take Back America, a Department of Justice initiative built to coordinate federal, state, and local resources against high-volume drug rings, according to the WPTF report on the case.
A Ring That Stretched From California to Wake County
Weeks was formally indicted in June 2024 under case number 5:24-cr-00200 and waived his detention hearing that July, remaining in federal custody continuously through his 2026 trial, per court records reviewed by PacerMonitor. He was not operating alone. West Coast supplier Raul “Ralph” Ramirez was sentenced on August 27 to 15 years in federal prison for supplying Weeks' ring with hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills, a case Hoodline detailed last month.
Two other co-defendants have already been sentenced. Donnavin Mustafia Byrdsong received 16 years in March 2025 after pleading guilty to flying to California to buy fentanyl pills and mailing them back to Raleigh hidden inside Lego toy boxes — a scheme that involved 40,000 pills intercepted in children's toy packaging during the investigation. Shakeim Weeks, identified by federal prosecutors as a local gang member operating within the network, was sentenced in May 2025 to 14 years for his role in the same distribution ring.
What Weeks Could Face at Sentencing
The math facing Weeks in October is grim by design. Federal statute 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) requires firearm sentences tied to drug trafficking to run consecutively, not concurrently, with underlying drug penalties, meaning his five firearms convictions will stack directly on top of whatever term he receives for the nine trafficking counts, according to the United States Sentencing Commission. Federal fentanyl trafficking separately carries 5-year and 10-year mandatory minimums depending on drug quantity, and because federal parole was abolished, inmates must serve at least 85 percent of whatever sentence they receive, per the Spodek Law Group.
Weeks' case lands amid a broader, if uneven, statewide picture on opioids. North Carolina health figures reported in August showed opioid overdose emergency room visits dropped 21 percent between 2024 and 2025, then fell another 27 percent through the first half of 2026, down from a peak of 9,624 visits in 2023, according to Narcotics.com. Even so, an average of nine North Carolinians die every day from fentanyl overdoses, making synthetic opioids the state's leading driver of fatal overdoses, according to the North Carolina Department of Justice.
Weeks' conviction adds another name to a growing list of Wake County fentanyl cases that have drawn lengthy federal sentences in recent years, including an earlier Raleigh dealer sentenced to 12 years in a separate fentanyl and gun case and another Wake Forest man sentenced to eight years on similar charges. Weeks now awaits his own sentencing on October 19, when Judge Dever will determine how the mandatory minimums, firearm enhancements, and lack of federal parole combine to shape the rest of his time behind bars.
