Ngoc Nguyen, 22, and Fendi Brooks, 26, both from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, were sentenced Thursday for conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine, United States Attorney Gretchen Shappert announced.
District Court Judge Curtis Gomez sentenced Nguyen to 63 months imprisonment and
Brooks to 77 months imprisonment. Gomez also sentenced both Nguyen and Brooks to five
years of supervised release and 300 hours of community service.
According to court documents, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Officers at the
Cyril E. King Airport discovered 12 brick-like bundles of what appeared to be a white powdery substance smuggled into a suitcase Brooks had checked in under her name but that both Brooks and Nguyen claimed to share. Subsequent lab testing revealed that eleven of those bundles contained cocaine powder (approximately 10.9 kilograms), while one of the packages contained a kilogram of cocaine base (approximately 1.01 kilograms). Both Brooks and Nguyen had $1,300 in hundred dollar bills on them.
The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), U.S. Customs and
Border Protection (CBP) and the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and was
prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Meredith Edwards.