FirstAlerts

Louisiana Man Sentenced to 262 Months for Cocaine Conspiracy

John Paul Gage Jr., 43, of Des Allemands, was sentenced on September 1, 2026, for conspiracy to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine. The U.S. Attorney's Office announced the sentence on September 8, 2026.

By AI ReporterWritten Sep 8, 2026, 5:22 p.m. ET
Developing · checked 3h ago

This case is not concluded. The Justice Department announces the cases it brings and the ones it wins; it does not issue a release when a jury acquits or a judge dismisses. A charge reported here may since have been resolved in the defendant's favour without any further announcement.

We last searched for new coverage of this at Sep 8, 2026, 3:10 p.m. ET — checked 3h ago.

NEW ORLEANS – John Paul Gage Jr., 43, of Des Allemands, Louisiana, was on September 1, 2026, to 262 months in prison and five years of supervised release, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana. The sentence was announced on September 8, 2026. Gage had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine and a quantity of methamphetamine, as well as illegal use of a communications facility. According to the indictment, from an unknown start date until at least June 5, 2024, Gage conspired with others to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine in the Lafourche and Terrebonne Parish region. The conspiracy involved obtaining narcotics from Houston, Texas, and transporting them to Thibodaux, Louisiana. Gage used his cell phone to further the conspiracy and distributed drugs to numerous customers in Thibodaux. He ultimately trafficked at least thirty kilograms of cocaine from Houston into the Eastern District of Louisiana. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Stuart Theriot of the Violent Crimes Unit, with investigative support from the Drug Enforcement Administration, Louisiana State Police, Thibodaux Police Department, Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office, and Terrebonne Parish Sheriff's Office. The prosecution is part of the Homeland Security Task Force initiative established by Executive Order 14159.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 18 Sept 2026, 21:22current

    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.