One of a dozen people indicted as part of a Western Pennsylvania drug ring last November has been sentenced to a decade in prison.

Nikia Perkins, 44, of Bloomington, Calif., was sentenced on charges he conspired to distribute just over a kilogram of fentanyl, U.S. Attorney Scott Brady said in Pittsburgh on Wednesday.

According to information presented in court, Perkins was heard in a wiretapped phone call talking about drug transactions. Prosecutors proved that Perkins was responsible for bringing more than a kilo of fentanyl, along with an undisclosed amount of carfentanil — a synthetic fentanyl derivative that is exponentially more powerful — into Western Pennsylvania from overseas.

Perkins asked that he be allowed to serve his sentence in California.

The prosecution was part of a year-long investigation by the FBI’s Greater Pittsburgh Safe Streets Task Force into what its members called a large-scale drug trafficking organization operating in Beaver, Butler and Allegheny counties.

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