Altoona man sentenced nearly 4 years for drug trafficking in Central Pennsylvania
Andrew Stowell, 67, was sentenced to 46 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, by United States District Judge Stephanie L. Haines.
Stowell was part of an Altoona-based drug trafficking organization, according to information presented to the court. On Dec. 12, 2022, Stowell sold a quarter-pound of methamphetamine to an undercover officer.
Original Story: Ten Central Pennsylvanians indicted on federal charges for drugs, money laundering
Rivetti commended the Drug Enforcement Administration, United States Postal Service–Office of Inspector General, United States Postal Inspection Service, Homeland Security Investigations, Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation, Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, and Pennsylvania State Police for the investigation leading to the successful prosecution of Stowell.Assistant United States Attorney Jonathan D. Lusty prosecuted this case on behalf of thegovernment.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Miami Herald
4 hours ago
- Miami Herald
‘Scared to die': Venezuelan who was held in megaprison files complaint against U.S.
He once dreamed of being recognized for his work — but instead, the U.S. sent him to a mega-prison in El Salvador. Branded a gang member and a terrorist, he spent four months behind bars. Now, after his release and return to Venezuela, he's determined to clear his name. Neiyerver Adrian Leon Rengel was one of more than 250 Venezuelans detained in the United States who was transferred in March to the Salvadoran maximum-security prison known as CECOT, the Spanish initials for Terrorism Confinement Center. 'I was very scared,' Leon Rengel, 27, told the Miami Herald, describing how guards would frequently insult them, calling them trash, scumbags and worse, and often told them they would never leave the prison. 'Even more so when a Salvadoran officer told me I was going to die there or spend 90 years in prison. While I was in CECOT, I never saw a lawyer or a judge. They wouldn't even let me make a phone call.' Read more: 'I have nightmares': Venezuelans imprisoned in El Salvador relive terror after return home The League of United Latin American Citizens, LULAC, a Washington-based civil-rights organization, has filed an administrative complaint with the Department of Homeland Security on his behalf, alleging Leon Rengel was deported without reason or due process. The complaint also details the abuses Leon Rengel said he endured at CECOT. 'He was beaten in his chest and stomach by guards, who used fists and batons to inflict pain,' the complaint says. 'On one occasion, he was taken to an area of the prison without cameras, where guards routinely brought detainees to assault them without leaving a video record. There, [Leon] Rengel was viciously beaten.' Leon Rengel told the Herald the Venezuelan detainees were kept in a separate module from Salvadoran detainees that housed 32 cells. He said he was placed in one of the cells with 19 other men, though some detainees were held in cells with fewer people, he said. He said he and his countrymen were 'beaten badly' if they complained about prison conditions. He recounted sleeping on bare metal bunks, stacked four levels high, without bedding or pillows. The two toilets in his cell were entirely open, offering no privacy, he added. He said the only time they were given mattresses and sheets was when authorities came to visit. 'Once the photos were taken and the authorities left, the guards would come and take away the mattresses and blankets,' he recalled. During the 125 days the Venezuelans were held at CECOT, they were not allowed outside once, he said: 'We never saw sunlight.' At one point, during a prison riot, he said, inmates were placed in an area called La Isla, the island, 'to beat us with batons. He described the island as a dark, small punishment room with a circular vent and two cross-shaped bars. The space was meant for two people, Leon Rengel said, but guards crammed in more detainees. 'They brought in several prisoners to beat us. We went more than 24 hours without water or light.' After the beatings, he said, they were taken to get medical care, but a doctor falsified the records, claiming their injuries were from playing soccer, something he says never happened. 'We hardly ever left the cells.' The complaint filed on Leon Rengel's behalf by LULAC in partnership with the Democracy Defenders Fund seeks $1.3 million in damages for violations of his civil rights. 'They gave him a document in English stating he could either be deported to Venezuela or appear before a judge,' said Juan Proaño, CEO of LULAC. 'Leon Rengel chose to see a judge — but he was never given that opportunity. Homeland Security failed to follow due process.' The complaint is the first step before litigation. Homeland Security has six months to respond. If they fail to do so, a lawsuit will be filed in Washington, D.C., Proaño said. Over the past four months, as both Venezuelan and Salvadoran detainees have been held at CECOT, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele has denied any allegations of torture inside the mega-prison. Responding to reports of abuse, he said, 'Apparently, anything a criminal claims is accepted as truth by the mainstream media and the crumbling Western judiciary.' When Leon Rengel emigrated to the U.S. in 2023, his goal was simple: to become a well-known barber and showcase his art. But in the heightened immigration crackdown during the Trump administration, he was labeled a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, largely because of his tattoos. He was arrested on March 13, his birthday, in the parking garage of his apartment in Irving, Texas, where he was living with his girlfriend. At the time, he was on a video call with his 6-year-old daughter, Isabella, who lives in Caracas, he said. Four Drug Enforcement Administration patrol cars surrounded him and arrested him, he said, although the agency has never clarified its role. 'They asked me to lift up my shirt, and when they saw my tattoos they accused me of being member of Tren de Aragua. But they never showed any evidence of a connection to the gang,' he said. 'They just laughed while wishing me happy birthday.' U.S. immigration agents have been targeting Venezuelan men based on tattoo images like animals, basketballs or reggaeton lyrics, even in the absence of any criminal record. Experts have said Tren de Aragua doesn't typically use tattoos as gang markers, and relying on them as indicators of gang ties risks serious miscarriages of justice. READ MORE: 'Crime of tattooing': Why experts say body ink is no way to ID Venezuelan gang members 'When I entered the U.S., nobody questioned me about my tattoos or anything related to a gang. It wasn't until after 2024 that I first heard officers mentioning tattoos and the gang,' Leon Rengel said. Records show that Leon Rengel entered the U.S. on June 12, 2023, through the Paso del Norte port of entry on the Mexico-Texas border after a prescheduled appointment on CBP One, a digital portal created by the Biden administration designed to manage the flow of migrants at the southern border. When he was arrested in March, Leon Rengel had been living in the U.S. for 21 months, with a pending Temporary Protected Status application, and was scheduled to appear before an immigration judge on April 4, 2028. He had one arrest in the U.S., in November 2024, for possession of drug paraphernalia — a non-jailable misdemeanor under Texas law. He was a passenger in a vehicle that was pulled over. According to Irving city records, he later pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana and was fined $492. He received no jail time or probation. In a statement issued in April — at a time Leon Rengel's family had no knowledge of his whereabouts — and repeated again in July, Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said he had 'entered our country illegally in 2023 from Venezuela and is an associate of Tren de Aragua.' But DHS did not provide any documentation to support the claim or explain why Leon Rengel was sent to El Salvador— especially given that the U.S. and Venezuela have been cooperating in the deportation of Venezuelan nationals directly back to their home country. For weeks after his detention in Texas his family had no idea where he was. He hadn't been returned to Venezuela, where his mother, Sandra Rengel, and three of his four siblings live, nor was his name in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee locator system or even on CECOT records obtained by media outlets. His relatives only learned of his whereabouts on April 23 through media reports, 39 days after he was deported to El Salvador. READ MORE: Weeks after disappearance, DHS confirms Venezuelan man was deported to El Salvador 'The most difficult part was for my mother and daughter, who didn't know where I was — whether I was alive or dead,' Leon Rengel said. 'My daughter suffered a lot. She prayed every day to see me again.' After his detenton in Irving he was briefly held at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas and later transferred to the East Hidalgo Detention Center, a privately run facility used by ICE in La Villa, Texas. Two days later he was deported to El Salvador. Leon Rengel said he and dozens of other Venezuelan detainees were told they were being deported to Venezuela. ICE agents 'never told us we were going to El Salvador,' he said. 'They said we were being sent to Venezuela and even made us lower the airplane window shades. The surprise came when we landed in San Salvador.' On July 18, the United States and Venezuela carried out a wide-ranging prisoner swap. As part of the agreement, 252 Venezuelans who had been deported from the U.S. and held in El Salvador's maximum-security prison were exchanged for dozens of political prisoners and 10 Americans imprisoned in Venezuela — including a Venezuelan-American who had been convicted of committing a triple murder in Spain. Leon Rengel said his only goal in filing the complaint is to clear his name. 'It's unfair they detained us without any evidence of wrongdoing. I have no criminal record in Venezuela or Colombia. All I want is for them to be held accountable for the harm the government did to me.' More than 75 other Venezuelan men that were held in CECOT are preparing similar claims, some of which involve allegations of head trauma, sexual violence and other forms of abuse, according to Proaño, the LULAC executive. 'This claim is too important to ignore,' Proaño said. 'If the Department of Homeland Security can deport Venezuelans without due process, they can do it to anyone — migrants of other nationalities, even U.S. citizens who are mistakenly identified. What's to stop them from sending people to third countries they're not even from?' He added: 'We can't let that become the norm. They need to be held accountable — and that means financial consequences.' Proaño said if the U.S. government is forded to pay '$1 million to each of the 250 people wrongfully deported to El Salvador, that's $250 million. That's a small amount compared to the billions already being spent to deport Latinos. It's the only way they'll learn.' Leon Rengel was born in 1998 — the same year Hugo Chávez rose to power, marking the beginning of Venezuela's unraveling. Growing up in a poor neighborhood of Caracas, his generation faced blackouts, food shortages and the crumbling of institutions. Before moving to the U.S., he spent six years in Colombia with his partner and daughter, maintaining a clean record, according to Colombian authorities. Inspired by friends who had successfully built new lives in America, he decided to emigrate. Now, he regrets that choice. 'If everything changes in the U.S., I'd go back just to visit — to see places I've always dreamed of,' he said. 'But I wouldn't try to build a life there again. This government is destroying the future of many Hispanics, especially Venezuelans.'
Epoch Times
4 hours ago
- Epoch Times
Customs Officers Plead Guilty to Allowing Cartels to Smuggle Drugs Into US
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers Jesse Clark Garcia and Diego Bonillo pleaded guilty to conspiring with members of a Mexico-based drug trafficking organization, federal prosecutors said on July 28. Garcia and Bonillo admitted to deliberately allowing vehicles carrying drugs to enter the United States without undergoing an inspection.
Miami Herald
6 hours ago
- Miami Herald
Cop framed NC woman in 2005 robberies, bomb threats, judge rules. Now she sues
An innocent woman implicated in a string of bank robberies and fake bomb threats 15 years after the crimes is suing the deputy who built the case against her, after a North Carolina judge ruled he framed her in violation of her constitutional rights. Criminal charges against Jodi Blanton were dismissed May 18, 2024, by Superior Court Judge J. Lynn Gullett, who wrote in an order that Carl Duncan, a cold case detective with the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office, lied and faked evidence to support her arrest in May 2020 after the 'State previously declined to prosecute (her) on two separate occasions.' Gullett's ruling says Duncan has a 'propensity to stretch, omit and falsify the truth when preparing investigative summaries and/or sworn applications for search warrants.' In 2018, after the sheriff's office hired him, Duncan reopened the investigation into the 2005 robberies and bomb threats, which he initially investigated as a former Shelby police officer, according a federal lawsuit filed by Blanton against Duncan on July 28. The filing says 'in the course of his re-investigation, Duncan uncovered no evidence linking Jodi Blanton' to the robberies or threats. Duncan and the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office did not immediately return McClatchy News' requests for comment July 17. 'This has been a nightmare,' Blanton, who lives in Cleveland County, told McClatchy News on July 31. 'My strong Christian faith, my husband of 37 years, my son and my close family and friends helped me manage through this horrible experience that still haunts me daily,' Blanton added. Duncan, according to a complaint, misled two judges into issuing search warrants, leading to two illegal searches of Blanton's home, where she lived with her husband Robert 'Bobby' Blanton, in February 2019. Afterward, he is further accused of misleading a district attorney into pursuing her prosecution. During one search, the complaint says the Blantons' dog Briley, a 12-pound terrier, 'was severely injured by officers.' Briley was 'forcefully restrained as others conducted the search and seized property,' Jodi Blanton's legal counsel, from Charlotte-based law firm Pfeiffer Rudolf, wrote in the filing. Sonya Pfeiffer, one of the attorneys, told McClatchy News on July 31 that Briley was left with broken blood vessels in her eyes, as well as bruising on her stomach and under her legs. 'Jodi's father was present and witnessed them drag Briley with a noose around her neck,' Pfeiffer said via email. 'She was hauled downstairs with her legs dangling which bruised under her legs.' Two photos Pfeiffer shared of Briley, showing the dog's injuries, were reviewed by McClatchy News. When the sheriff's office's cold case unit announced Jodi Blanton's 2020 arrest, they said she robbed the First National Bank in Shelby in June 2005, Alliance Bank in Shelby in November 2005 and the BB&T Bank in Fallston in August of that year, The Shelby Star newspaper reported. The agency further accused her of making a bomb threat over the phone to a Harris Teeter in Shelby, while the First National Bank robbery was underway, and another bomb threat against Burns Middle School in Lawndale the day the BB&T bank was robbed, according to the newspaper. The sheriff's office suggested Jodi Blanton tried distracting Cleveland County authorities with the bomb threats to carry out the robberies. 'After discovering some new evidence, Blanton was charged,' the newspaper reported May 28, 2020. 'The Sheriff's Office did not disclose what the new piece of evidence was.' In his sworn affidavits, according to the complaint, Duncan left out exculpatory evidence, including how the Harris Teeter bomb threat was linked to a phone number unrelated to Jodi Blanton. Duncan also never mentioned that when the First National Bank was robbed that day, witnesses' descriptions of the suspect, who they said was Black, did not match Jodi Blanton's appearance, the complaint says. In Gullett's May 2024 order, the judge wrote that following the November 2005 Alliance Bank robbery, a bank teller said the accused robber wore a mask, had 'blonde curly hair and was wearing 'lots of makeup.'' '(The teller) indicated that the robber reminded her of someone that she knew by the name of Jodi Blanton, but she could not make a positive identification of Jodi Blanton,' Gullett wrote in the order. Despite a lack of evidence and prosecutors previously declining to charge Jodi Blanton, she was arrested on felony charges related to the robberies and two counts of issuing a false bomb threat, according to the lawsuit. Pfeiffer told McClatchy News that 'the Blantons are baffled as to why Duncan was so fixated on Jodi.' In the May 2024 order, Gullett found 'Detective Duncan's negligence in failing to preserve evidence, coupled with intentional misrepresentations as to material facts in investigative summaries presented to the District Attorney, and his inclusion of material falsehoods in sworn statements in search warrants, has collectively caused actual prejudice to (Blanton).' It is unclear if the 2005 robberies and bomb threats have been solved. Jodi Blanton is suing Duncan on three federal claims under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment violations, including: fabrication of evidence and use of false evidenceunlawful search without probable causeunlawful seizure without probable cause/malicious prosecution She is bringing three state claims – malicious prosecution, gross negligence/recklessness and intentional infliction of emotional distress – against Duncan. 'For over 20 years, I have watched with shock and a sense of helplessness as my wife and family have lived in isolation, wrestling with fear and humiliation for being wrongly accused,' Bobby Blanton said in a statement to McClatchy News. 'By the Grace of God and love for one another we have managed to endure. But it has been almost indescribably difficult.' Jodi Blanton wants accountability and an unspecified amount in damages in the lawsuit. She demands a jury trial. 'I work daily on forgiveness, but justice and accountability matter to me and my family, and I pray nothing like this happens to anyone else,' she said.
