Miami, Florida - A Florida man was sentenced Wednesday in the Southern District of Florida to 200 months in prison for illegally distributing opioids at his pain management clinic in Miami, Florida.

Mexico City, Mexico - On April 5 and 6, in Mexico City, Mexico, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico hosted a collaborative Regional Smuggling Forum and Roundtable event to promote the Bicentennial Agreement. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)’s Office of Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and Training (OPDAT) led the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL)-funded workshop to bring together human smuggling investigators and prosecutors from El Salvador, Honduras, and the United States; investigators from Guatemala; and prosecutors from Mexico. During this event, in which Deputy Chief of Mission Stephanie Syptak-Ramnath delivered opening remarks, participants shared best practices, discussed recent trends and obstacles, and coordinated strategies during roundtable discussions. This forum was designed to increase successful collaborations between regional partners in combating transnational human smuggling organizations. 

Buffalo, New York - An Oklahoma woman pleaded guilty Wednesday in the Western District of New York for a scheme to defraud the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) of over $43.8 million in COVID-19 relief loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration (SBA) under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

Washington, DC - The Justice Department today announced a court-authorized operation, conducted in March 2022, to disrupt a two-tiered global botnet of thousands of infected network hardware devices under the control of a threat actor known to security researchers as Sandworm, which the U.S. government has previously attributed to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (the GRU). The operation copied and removed malware from vulnerable internet-connected firewall devices that Sandworm used for command and control (C2) of the underlying botnet. Although the operation did not involve access to the Sandworm malware on the thousands of underlying victim devices worldwide, referred to as “bots,” the disabling of the C2 mechanism severed those bots from the Sandworm C2 devices’ control.

New York - A Russian national is charged with violating U.S. sanctions arising from the 2014 Russian undermining of democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine.

Cheyenne, Wyoming - ESI Energy Inc. (ESI) was sentenced Tuesday in Cheyenne, Wyoming, for violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA), announced Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division and U.S. Attorney L. Robert Murray for the District of Wyoming.