DELAWARE - The Delaware Department of Justice has announced that Brahmananda Prasad was sentenced to 275 months, which is just shy of 23 years, in prison for his role in a nationwide cocaine-trafficking conspiracy on May 29, 2026.
U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika with the District of Delaware imposed the sentence. In addition to the prison sentence, the Court also issued a Preliminary Order of Forfeiture for a personal money judgement of $2,495,500. Officials say this amount represents the gross proceeds of Prasad's cocaine enterprise. The Preliminary Order of Forfeiture will allow the government to seize that amount of money.
Court documents show that 65-year-old Brahmananda Prasad, from Queens, New York, engaged in a coast-to-coast cocaine-trafficking conspiracy. Prasad flew from his home in New York to California regularly. On these trips, he met with cocaine suppliers and purchased multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine. While he regularly purchased between 20 and 24 kilograms of cocaine at a time, on occasion it was found that he would buy as much as 48 kilograms.
Prasad then shipped the drugs back to New York while directing others to pose as representatives of his seemingly legitimate shipping company to avoid getting caught. Once back on the East Coast, Prasad would distribute cocaine to sub-distributors in New York and Maryland, who then further distributed the drugs in Delaware and elsewhere on the East Coast, according to officials with the DOJ.
The government's investigation into the drug-trafficking conspiracy included drug seizures, surveillance, analysis of flight and shipping records, and a nearly four-month long wiretap, among other measures. According to the investigation, Prasad had been shipping cocaine from California to New York since at least 2021. It was also revealed that Prasad was responsible for bringing at least 956 kilograms, or roughly 2,107 pounds, of cocaine to the East Coast.
DOJ officials say that drug weight is approximately six times the volume attributed to any other drug defendant in the District of Delaware in recent cases.
When speaking on the case, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, Benjamin L. Wallace, said, "Brahmananda Prasad made millions by pumping poison into several states on the East Coast, Delaware included. But due to the dogged efforts of federal prosecutors and agents, Prasad will pay those millions back—and will spend more than two decades in prison to boot. This just sentence should send a message to other large-scale drug traffickers: if your product touches Delaware, we will find you and hold you accountable, even if you never once set foot in our State."
This sentencing follows a long-term investigation spearheaded by Homeland Security Investigations, the United States Postal Inspection Service, and the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation.
