By Staff Reporter
BUFFALO, N.Y. — When state prosecutors took down a drug network that ran fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine from Buffalo to Jamestown, they announced a 130-count indictment. Nineteen months later, the case is ending with seven guilty pleas, prison terms well under the maximums, and two defendants on probation.
Attorney General Letitia James announced Tuesday that the last of the main defendants had been sentenced. Ronnie Dupree, 49, of Buffalo, whom prosecutors called the central figure in the network, received 10 years in state prison plus five years of post-release supervision in Erie County Court before Judge Suzanne Maxwell Barnes.
“Drug traffickers who flood our communities with deadly fentanyl and opioids threaten the safety of all New Yorkers,” Ms. James said in a statement. “My office will continue fighting to dismantle drug trafficking rings that spread violence and addiction.”
How the network worked
According to the attorney general’s office, Mr. Dupree bought large quantities of cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine from Dion Anderson, Kenneth Pringle, Antwain Jackson and others. He and Mr. Jackson drove from Buffalo to Jamestown to meet customers. Sales were set up by phone and completed at locations around Western New York.
Investigators with the office’s Organized Crime Task Force, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Niagara Falls Police Department used court-authorized wiretaps. Prosecutors said the defendants spoke in code: cocaine was “soft,” “hard” or “girl,” fentanyl was “food” or “boy,” and methamphetamine was “cream.” The Buffalo Police Department and the New York Army National Guard Counter Drug Task Force assisted.
A November 2024 search of Mr. Anderson’s Buffalo home turned up more than half a pound of cocaine, a scale with cocaine residue and more than $4,000 in cash, the office said. Over the full investigation, authorities recovered nearly a kilogram of cocaine, more than half a pound of methamphetamine and more than an ounce of fentanyl. The office valued the drugs at about $33,100 combined.
“These drug traffickers turned communities across Western New York into marketplaces for fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine, putting lives at risk with every sale,” said Farhana Islam, special agent in charge of the DEA’s New York division. “These individuals operated under the false belief that coded language and secret transactions would shield them from law enforcement. They were wrong.”
What the defendants faced, and what they got
The Chronicle compared the sentences with the maximum penalties the attorney general’s office listed when the indictment was unsealed in February 2025. Every defendant pleaded guilty, and every sentence imposed so far was well below the top count:
- Ronnie Dupree, 49, Buffalo: faced up to 24 years; sentenced to 10 years.
- Kenneth Pringle, 52, Niagara Falls: faced up to 30 years; sentenced in December 2025 to seven years.
- Dion Anderson, 46, Buffalo: faced up to 20 years; sentenced in March to eight years.
- Antwain Jackson, 50, Buffalo: faced up to 10 years; sentenced Sept. 29 to six years.
- Sabrina Leeper, 52, Jamestown: faced up to 10 years; sentenced in January to five years’ probation.
- David Vaughn, 28, Buffalo: faced up to 10 years; sentenced in May to five years’ probation.
- Devan Huntington, 32, Jamestown: pleaded guilty to possessing methamphetamine with intent to sell; awaiting sentencing.
Plea agreements are routine in narcotics cases, and they spare the state long trials and the risk of acquittal. But the gap between the February 2025 announcement and this week’s outcome is worth noting. Two defendants were sentenced to probation, and a third has not yet been sentenced.
The rhetoric at the start of the case was stronger. “Today’s arraignment of these seven individuals, who continuously flooded our upstate neighborhoods with illicit and synthetic drugs, shows the determination we have when targeting those drug trafficking organizations poisoning our communities,” Frank Tarentino, then the DEA’s New York special agent in charge, said in the February 2025 announcement.
A second fentanyl case, a death in Tonawanda
The state case closed in the same week as a federal one that shows what is at stake. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Arcara sentenced Michael Paonessa, 36, of Niagara Falls, to 198 months, or 16½ years, in federal prison for distributing fentanyl, U.S. Attorney Michael DiGiacomo announced.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mr. Paonessa gave fentanyl to his girlfriend, identified by prosecutors only as R.A., after a dinner in downtown Buffalo in April 2023. She died of an overdose early the next morning in her Sheridan Drive apartment in Tonawanda. Prosecutors said he stayed in the apartment for hours after her death without calling for help. As he drove away, he texted her phone asking her to call him, a message prosecutors said was meant to make it look as if he had not been with her. Her family found her body.
The DEA, under Ms. Islam, was part of that investigation too, along with the ATF, the North Tonawanda Police Department and the Niagara County Drug Task Force.
Open questions
The attorney general’s announcements leave several questions unanswered. They do not say who supplied the network’s own suppliers, or whether anyone has stepped in to fill the Buffalo-to-Jamestown route since the 2025 arrests. They also do not say whether drug-related arrests or overdose calls in Chautauqua County changed after the indictment. Those are the measures that would show whether a takedown like this one made the streets safer, and the Chronicle intends to pursue them.
Mr. Huntington’s sentencing date has not been announced.
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