Leader of Alaska drug trafficking organization sentenced to 15 years in Homeland Security Task Force case

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A California man that acted as the leader for an Alaska drug trafficking organization was sentenced yesterday to 15 years in prison for his role in the illegal enterprise. According to court documents, in Spring 2022, Tyrone Hampton, 44, moved his pregnant wife and co-defendant, Stephanie Blanchard, 39, and two other associates from Southern California to Alaska to participate in the drug trafficking trade. The two associates were co-defendants Keith Crossley, 37, and Lawrence McGirt, 27. All three men were gang members in Southern California. Upon arrival in Alaska, Hampton and his co-conspirators began selling illegal drugs, primarily heroin and fentanyl. One of the locations Hampton used for drug trafficking was an apartment in Wasilla. On April 12, 2022, the landlord of the apartment called law enforcement to trespass multiple people frequenting the apartment. Hampton’s main drug supplier was codefendant Kevyn Watson, 43, a fellow gang member from California. At the time, Watson was serving a 40-year prison sentence in prison in Oklahoma. He had access to multiple contraband cellphones in prison. Watson used the phones to coordinate continued drug trafficking using his associates in California. Hampton and Watson coordinated the shipment of multiple packages of drugs to Alaska through the mail. At some point in April 2022, Hampton’s cousin and co-defendant, Charles Holyfield, 41, of Arizona, reached out to Hampton about a debt that Hampton owed him. During that conversation, the two men agreed to have Holyfield mail illegal fentanyl pills from a supplier in Arizona to Alaska to be sold for a high profit and split the proceeds together. On April 25, Holyfield mailed over 2,500 fentanyl pills by stuffing them inside one of two pillows and packaging the pillows up in a box and addressing it to the Wasilla apartment building. Hampton directed Blanchard to send Holyfield $2,000 via wire transfer for the cost of the pills. The next day, UPS attempted to deliver Holyfield’s package to the apartment in Wasilla but could not because there was no apartment number written on the label. UPS marked the package as “suspicious.” They searched the package, found fentanyl pills and alerted the Alaska State Troopers. This same day, Hampton directed Holyfield to board a flight to Alaska and Hampton picked him up from the airport. Hampton, Holyfield and Blanchard spent a night in a local motel. United States Attorney's Office, District of Alaska; U.S. v. Holyfield et al., Case #: 3:22-cr-00084 On April 27, Hampton, Blanchard and Holyfield drove from the motel to the Wasilla apartment and realized the package had not arrived yet. What the defendants didn’t know is the Alaska State Troopers (AST) had seized the drugs, resealed the package with sham drugs and obtained a state search warrant for the Wasilla apartment. That same day, AST conducted a controlled delivery of the package and waited until Hampton, Holyfield, McGirt and Crossley returned to the building to execute the warrant and arrest them. Troopers recovered the package inside a closet and found evidence of a makeshift methamphetamine lab in the apartment. On April 28, UPS notified AST that they received another suspicious package destined for the Wasilla apartment. Inside the package, AST found a tupperware container with one kilogram of heroin wrapped in six levels of packaging. Through the investigation, law enforcement determined that Watson and Hampton coordinated the shipment of this package, referring to the one kilogram of heroin as “the whole chalupa” in text messages. Hampton directed Keith Crossley and Lawrence McGirt to each transfer $2,500 in drug proceeds via wire transfer to two individuals in California as partial payment to Watson for the shipment of heroin. United States Attorney's Office, District of Alaska; U.S. v. Holyfield et al., Case #: 3:22-cr-00084 Court documents explain that in just over six weeks, Hampton deposited over $26,900 into hi