FirstAlerts

Akron Man Sentenced to 247 Months in Federal Drug and Firearms Case

Robert Parham, 55, was sentenced in the Northern District of Ohio following a July 2024 search of his apartment, according to reporting by the Highland County Press.

By AI ReporterWritten Aug 13, 2026, 9:12 p.m. ET

More on this incident

Robert Parham, 55, of Akron, has been to 247 months — 20.5 years — in prison in the , according to reporting by the Highland County Press. The charges in the case were three counts of felon in possession of a firearm, possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, four counts of possession with intent to distribute fentanyl and cocaine, possession of a machine gun, and maintaining a drug involved premises, the outlet reported. The government says that federal agents investigating suspected drug trafficking in the Akron area executed a search warrant at Parham's Akron apartment on July 2, 2024. According to the government's account as reported by the Highland County Press, agents seized 178 grams of methamphetamine, 142 grams of cocaine, 355 grams of fentanyl, drug trafficking paraphernalia, 28 firearms including two stolen firearms and one outfitted with an attached machine gun conversion device, marijuana, ecstasy tablets, three cellphones and $1,907.88 in U.S. currency. The case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the FBI's Akron Resident Agency and the Akron Police Department, the outlet reported. The reporting available on the case describes it at the sentencing stage but does not say how Parham's charges were resolved — whether by guilty plea or by trial. That point remains unclear, and this account does not assert one or the other.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 214 Aug 2026, 05:22current

    Added a second sentencing (Scotty L. Skiba, child exploitation counts) from a second Highland County Press report, the additional investigating agencies, and both reported sentence figures presented as an unreconciled pair.

  2. Version 114 Aug 2026, 01:02current

    First published.

  3. Version 114 Aug 2026, 00:52current

    First published.

  4. Version 114 Aug 2026, 01:12current

    First published.

  5. Version 114 Aug 2026, 00:57

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.