A Burien man who delivered suitcases full of methamphetamine – £30 to £40 at a time – will spend more than seven years in prison.
Gustavo Castellanos-Tapia, 38, was a former lawyer from Mexico. He was a “major supplier” of meth to a drug trafficking organization linked to the Aryan Family prison gang, according to a press release from U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman.
Authorities said he came to the U.S. in 2020 as the pandemic caused an economic downturn. He started painting boats, but started dealing drugs to make more money.
Eventually, he started delivering suitcases full of meth every few weeks, police surveillance showed.
Castellanos-Tapia and 23 others were charged and arrested in March 2023.
During the investigation, officers arrested members of the drug organization about:
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255 pounds of meth
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830,000 fentanyl pills
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26 pounds of powdered fentanyl
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Cocaine
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6 pounds of heroin
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$668,000 in suspected drug money
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225 guns
Prosecutors asked for a nine-year prison sentence, pointing out that overdose deaths in Washington state rose more than 27% in the year ending December 2023.
Castellanos-Tapia was sentenced Friday to 90 months in prison for conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance.
