Belgrade Man Receives 18 Years in Prison for Cocaine Distribution and Firearm Possession

A federal judge in Montana sentenced a man from Belgrade to 18 years and four months in prison on May 13, 2026 for cocaine distribution and gun charges.

The defendant, identified in the Justice Department release as the sole individual charged in the case, pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute cocaine and being a felon in possession of a firearm. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Montana prosecuted the case in federal district court there.

The sentence includes a five-year term of supervised release that begins after completion of the prison term. The court also ordered forfeiture of property tied to the offenses. The charges stemmed from an investigation that recovered both cocaine and multiple firearms from the defendant’s control.

The conviction carries collateral consequences that alter the defendant’s legal status permanently. As a convicted felon on federal drug and firearms counts, he loses the right to possess firearms for life, faces restrictions on federal benefits, and must comply with all supervised-release conditions that include drug testing, employment requirements, and geographic limits.

The Bureau of Prisons will now calculate his exact release date, which falls in 2044 barring any good-time adjustments.

Downstream, the U.S. Probation Office for the District of Montana must prepare a supervision plan that begins the day the defendant leaves prison. The forfeiture order requires transfer of seized assets to the Justice Department’s Asset Forfeiture Fund within established administrative timelines.

Federal sentencing guidelines applied in the case also require the U.S. Attorney’s Office to report the disposition to the national criminal records system, updating the defendant’s criminal history for any future prosecutions or background checks.

This sentencing concludes a prosecution opened after investigators linked the defendant to cocaine sales and recovered firearms in his possession. The Department of Justice has pursued similar felon-in-possession and drug trafficking cases in the District of Montana throughout the past decade, often combining them to trigger enhanced penalties under federal statutes that impose longer mandatory minimums when firearms are present during drug crimes.

The case was handled exclusively through the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Montana and the Department of Justice.