A Spanaway drug dealer with white supremacist ties who federal authorities said knew his drugs were causing overdoses was sentenced to 12 years in prison Friday for distribution of fentanyl and methamphetamine.
Sean Michael Moinette, 46, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Tacoma for his leadership role in a drug distribution network.
He and more than two dozen conspirators were arrested in March 2023. Some had ties to an Aryan prison gang. The criminal syndicate operates both inside and outside prisons and has a white supremacist ideology, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“This defendant was deeply involved in distributing drugs, arranging couriers, and seeking various sources of supply,” said U.S. Attorney Tessa Gorman in a news release. “But when confronted with the information that his fentanyl was too strong and causing overdoses, he did not skip a beat and continued to scheme about moving his poison in our community.”
Moinette, identified as a mid-level manager of the drug ring, continued to distribute large quantities of fentanyl despite his supplier telling him that their customers were “dropping like flies,” the U.S. Attorney’s office said. Investigators wiretapped his phone calls.
In other calls, Moinette called women “live shipping containers” which he used to transport fentanyl out of state under threat of violence.
“When a drug redistributor was stopped and her car impounded, Moinette was heard on the wire scheming to break into the police impound yard to try to get the drugs out of the vehicle,” the U.S. Attorney’s office said. “The break-in did not occur.”
When Moinette and others were arrested at 18 locations in Washington and Arizona, authorities seized:
- 177 firearms.
- 10 kilos of methamphetamine.
- 11 kilos of fentanyl pills and one kilo of fentanyl powder.
- Three kilos of heroin.
- $330,000 in cash.
Moinette is the eighth member of the drug conspiracy to be sentenced.
Along with federal and state agencies, the investigation was aided by the Tacoma Police Department, Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, and the Thurston County Narcotics Task Force, led by the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office.
