Erwin man sentenced for meth trafficking
Published 10:19 am Tuesday, August 15, 2023
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Joshua Dwayne Mabery, 47, of Erwin, was recently sentenced to 262 months in federal prison, by the Honorable J. Ronnie Greer, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Greeneville.
Following a three-day trial, ending on March 30, Mabery was convicted of conspiracy to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine, and possession with the intent to distribute methamphetamine. Upon his release from prison, Mabery will be on supervised release for 10 years.The evidence presented at trial demonstrated that Mabery, who had recently been released from prison related to a federal conviction in 2012 for conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine, began distributing methamphetamine in the fall of 2020 in northeast Tennessee. In February 2021, he and a co-conspirator were arrested in Washington County as they returned from Knoxville with over a half-kilogram of crystal methamphetamine they had just purchased from another co-conspirator.
The criminal indictment was the result of a joint investigation by the Carter County Sheriff’s Office, Johnson City Police Department, Tennessee Highway Patrol, Drug Enforcement Administration, Homeland Security Investigations, and United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General. Assistant United States Attorneys J. Gregory Bowman and B.Todd Martin represented the United States. This case was a result of the Department of Justice’s Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) Strike Force Initiative, which provides for the establishment of permanent multi-agency task force teams that work side-by-side in the same location. This co-located model enables agents from different agencies to collaborate on intelligence-driven, multi-jurisdictional operations to disrupt and dismantle the most significant drug traffickers, money launderers, gangs, and transnational criminal organizations.