Etowah County Man Sentenced to More than 17 Years in Prison for Trafficking Drugs

ANNISTON, Ala. - An Etowah County man has been sentenced for trafficking drugs, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Catherine L. Crosby.

U.S. District Judge Corey L. Maze sentenced Tostig Denard Moore, 41, of Gadsden, Alabama, to 214 months in prison. In December 2025, Moore pleaded guilty to distribution of methamphetamine and possession with the intent to distribute fentanyl.

According to the plea agreement, between December 2024 and February 2025, Moore sold approximately 495 grams of methamphetamine to a law enforcement source over a series of controlled purchases. On March 4, 2025, deputies with the Etowah County Sheriff's Office conducted a traffic stop on Moore and later arrested him after finding over a kilogram of fentanyl in his vehicle. Post-arrest, Moore admitted to travelling to Georgia to resupply on illegal narcotics.

This case is part of Operation Tres Hermanos. That operation is part of the Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) initiative established by Executive Order 14159, Protecting the American People Against Invasion. The HSTF is a whole-of-government partnership dedicated to eliminating criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking rings operating in the United States and abroad. Through historic interagency collaboration, the HSTF directs the full might of United States law enforcement towards identifying, investigating, and prosecuting the full spectrum of crimes committed by these organizations, which have long fueled violence and instability within our borders. In performing this work, the HSTF places special emphasis on investigating and prosecuting those engaged in child trafficking or other crimes involving children. The HSTF further utilizes all available tools to prosecute and remove the most violent criminal aliens from the United States. The Alabama HSTF comprises agents and officers from the Drug Enforcement Administration, Homeland Security Investigations, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Marshals Service, and the Internal Revenue Service, with the prosecution being led by the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Alabama.

The FBI investigated the case along with the Etowah County Sheriff's Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Carson R. Gilbert prosecuted the case.