U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Montana issued the following announcement on Sept. 20.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office announced that a Kalispell man and two persons from California appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Kathleen L. DeSoto on criminal complaints charging them with methamphetamine trafficking crimes.
John Patrick Figueroa Araujo, 53, of Kalispell, Kristal Patricia Leonard, 34, of Huntington Beach, CA, and John Murray Barry, 39, of Palmdale, CA, are charged with conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and with possession with intent to distribute. If convicted of the most serious crime, the defendants face a minimum mandatory 10 years to life in prison, a $10 million fine and five years of supervised release. All defendants were detained pending further proceedings.
The charging documents are merely accusations and defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Court documents filed in the case said investigators arrested the defendants on Sept. 18 as they were driving separately and that search warrants executed on their vehicles revealed approximately 31.5 pounds of methamphetamine, which is the equivalent of about 114,156 doses.
The case was investigated by the Northwest Montana Drug Task Force, Homeland Security Investigations, Missoula High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force, Montana Highway Patrol, Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, Lake County Sheriff’s Office, Polson Police Department, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ Police Department, Flathead County Sheriff’s Office, Kalispell Police Department, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Border Patrol and Two Bear Air. Pacer case reference. 19-61.
If this case is of interest to your media organization and the community it serves, we encourage you to monitor the progress of it through the U.S. District Court calendar and the PACER system.
To establish a PACER account, which will allow you to review documents filed in the case, please go to, http://www.pacer.gov/register.html. To access the district court’s calendar, please go to https://ecf.mtd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/PublicCalendar.pl.
Original source can be found here.
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