Fifteen men stand charged in a twelve-count superseding indictment unsealed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, accused of running a transnational drug trafficking organization that moved massive quantities of methamphetamine from California and gamma-butyrolactone — GBL — from South Korea for distribution in the capital and along the East Coast, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro announced.
The superseding indictment adds four new defendants — Joseph Micha Macias, 47, Jason Andrew Frasher, 52, and Peter Allan Rothberg, 42, all of the District, and Rassoul Amall Martin-Wilson, 40, of Philadelphia, known as "Duce" and "Deuce" — to eleven men first charged in the spring. Agents arrested the four on Tuesday, executing search warrants across two federal districts — the District of Columbia and the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Martin-Wilson was ordered detained pending trial on Tuesday, while Macias, Frasher and Rothberg were set for initial appearances in the District on Wednesday. The eleven earlier defendants were arrested in late April and early May; eight have been ordered held pending the case.
The charges are allegations, and every defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty in court. In Tuesday's takedowns, officers recovered approximately 13 pounds of methamphetamine, about 1.5 pounds of GBL, additional narcotics including ecstasy pills, and more than $16,000 in cash.
According to court documents, from at least November 2022 through the present day, the network stretched along the Northeast Corridor from New York City to Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, with expansion efforts underway into Chicago, Florida and Southern California. The organization worked to a defined division of labour: upstream suppliers sourced narcotics in bulk, regional distributors stored, repackaged and moved product, and downstream distributors sold to customers while collecting and concealing the proceeds. Members hid behind encrypted messaging applications and coded language, moved drugs through commercial parcel services and the U.S. mail, kept stash locations, and routed payments through peer-to-peer platforms and shell companies, laundering the money through business accounts built to look like legitimate income.
Prosecutors say the organization sold methamphetamine and GBL together, for simultaneous use, in a poly-drug combination known as "sexchem" — a pairing prosecutors describe as lethal and unpredictable. GBL is an industrial solvent with legitimate uses in paint remover, adhesive and nail polish remover, but sold for human use it is a Schedule I controlled substance: the body rapidly converts it into GHB, one of the most pervasive date rape drugs, and its margin of safety is dangerously narrow — a small increase in dose can bring unconsciousness, seizures, slowed heart rate, severe respiratory depression, coma or death.
U.S. Attorney Pirro said: "This organization peddled a deadly combination of meth and GBL, putting lives at risk for profit. They used encrypted apps, shell companies, and the U.S. mail to hide their operation. It didn't work. Fifteen defendants now face federal charges. Since my appointment as U.S. Attorney, my office, alongside the Homeland Security Task Force, has seized more than 1,800 pounds of meth. To those flooding our communities with deadly drugs: we will find you, dismantle your operation, and put you behind bars."
Each of the fifteen is charged with conspiracy to distribute 500 grams or more of a mixture containing methamphetamine and 50 grams or more of pure methamphetamine. Macias faces five additional counts of possession with intent to distribute, Frasher two, and Rothberg one, plus a further GBL conspiracy count against Rothberg. The eleven original defendants were each charged with a conspiracy covering methamphetamine and GBL; three of them — Michael Robert Spitzer, Scott Patrick Morgan and Javier Gomez-Franco — also face a money-laundering conspiracy charge, and Matthew Thomas Kent faces three counts of distribution. Gregory Wallace is separately charged by complaint with conspiracy to possess methamphetamine and GBL with intent to distribute, and with possessing a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking. All face mandatory minimum sentences of ten years to life if convicted. Chief Judge James E. Boasberg is presiding over the case.
In total, law enforcement has seized more than 87 kilograms of high-purity methamphetamine, more than 800 kilograms of GBL inside the United States, and more than 57 kilograms of ketamine. Working with South Korean law enforcement, U.S. prosecutors and agents travelled to Seoul to identify the GBL exporters and cut the supply chain at its source; South Korean authorities arrested five of their own nationals, and in September 2025 seized approximately 1.5 metric tons of GBL — the largest domestic seizure of a controlled substance ever recorded in South Korea.
Cindy Marx, the DEA's Special Agent in Charge in Washington, said: "The criminals involved in these operations—more than 15 apprehended so far— have pushed too far by distributing dangerous drugs and threatening the well-being of our people, our community, and our children. They operated a complex, multi-layered drug trafficking network stretching from Washington, D.C., and across the East Coast, with active plans to expand their drug trafficking network into other parts of our country. We are going after all of them. Together with our Homeland Security and Safe and Beautiful Task Force partners, we will succeed."
Kai Wah Chan, Acting Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Washington, said: "HSI is proud to stand with our partners from across government to announce another milestone in this Homeland Security Task Force operation. We continue the work of disrupting the networks funneling deadly drugs into the United States and into our communities. Protecting the Homeland is not the job of a single agency. Today's results show that together, we're making our country safer, one investigation at a time."
Kareem Carter, Special Agent in Charge of IRS Criminal Investigation's Washington field office, said: "Today's indictment sends a resounding message that IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agents are committed to working with our law enforcement partners to aggressively uncover, dismantle, and disrupt drug trafficking network. IRS-CI brings unmatched financial investigative expertise to complex criminal cases. Regardless of the complexity of the investigation, whether it is money laundering, Bank Secrecy Act violations, complex financial fraud, or leveraging our tax authority, we will continue to take criminals off the street and dismantle transnational criminal organizations."
For the neighbourhoods along the corridor this network supplied, the takedown cuts off a pipeline that paired one of the most addictive drugs on the street with a date rape drug and sold the two as a party combination — and it cuts it at both ends, the California methamphetamine supply and the Korean GBL source alike. The case is a Homeland Security Task Force operation, the whole-of-government effort against transnational criminal organizations, and the prosecutors bringing it say the dismantling is not finished.
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