Father, son, sentenced for trafficking cocaine to St. Louis

 

Date: May 15, 2024

Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov

ST. LOUIS — U.S. District Judge Ronnie. L. White on Wednesday sentenced a father and son who brought kilograms of cocaine to St. Louis for years to more than 10 years in prison.

Judge White sentenced Gregory Dixson Jr. to 15 years in prison and ordered him to pay a $10,000 fine. He will also be on supervised release for 10 years after he gets out of prison. His son, Gregory Cornell Dixson III was sentenced to 10 years and one month in prison.

Beginning in at least 2015, the Dixsons conspired with others to bring cocaine to St. Louis. Dixson Jr. admitted that at least 450 kilograms of cocaine could be attributed to his conduct and the conduct of others. For Dixson III, that figure was 50 to 150 kilograms of cocaine.

In late 2016 or early 2017, Dixson Jr. and/or Dixson III sent couriers to Texas to buy kilograms of cocaine from Miguel Angel Gonzalez, who bought it from Carlos Gonzalez. Dixson Jr. was at one point buying as much as eight to 16 kilograms per week.

During the investigation, law enforcement officers intercepted or seized cocaine and cash. In September of 2015, 31 kilograms of cocaine was found hidden inside a vehicle. The cocaine was supplied by Omar Pena Vargas.

In August of 2018, Gonzalez was found in a hotel with two bags containing a total of $634,770 in cash, representing a partial payment for 75 kilograms of cocaine being sold to Dixson Jr.

On Oct. 28, 2018, eight kilograms of cocaine bound for St. Louis were seized.

In March of 2020, 23.6 pounds of a mix of heroin and fentanyl was seized from Ruben Sanchez Blanco. Some of those drugs were intended for St. Louis, Dixon III’s plea says.

In July of 2021, $161,845 was found hidden inside a vehicle that Quintin Deforest Adkins drove to Texas to buy six kilograms of cocaine.

Dixson Jr. pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy to distribute and possess with the intent to distribute more than 5 kilograms of cocaine and conspiracy to launder money. Dixson III pleaded guilty to the same cocaine conspiracy charge as his father.

Dixson Jr. agreed to forfeit $135,265, the proceeds from the sale of a home in Texas, a 2015 GMC Sierra 1500 Denali, a customized 2015 Harley Davidson Road Glide and cash in lieu of a 2018 Dodge Challenger Demon.

Vargas is in federal prison. Miguel Gonzalez pleaded guilty in November to a charge of conspiracy to distribute and possess with the intent to distribute more than 5 kilograms of cocaine and 400 grams of fentanyl. He is scheduled to be sentenced in June. Adkins pleaded guilty in November to the cocaine and fentanyl conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy charges and was sentenced in February to 87 months in prison. Blanco of El Paso, Texas, was sentenced in June to five years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine and fentanyl. Carlos Gonzalez is deceased.

The IRS Criminal Investigation (CI), the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the FBI investigated the case.

This effort is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) operation. OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest-level criminal organizations that threaten the United States using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multiagency approach.

CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.