Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division
ELI SAMUEL O’FARRILL-FERNANDEZ, also known as “Maple,” 48, of New Britain, was sentenced yesterday by U.S. District Judge Michael P. Shea in Hartford to 120 months of imprisonment and five years of supervised release for trafficking cocaine.
Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division
A Venezuelan national and illegal alien has been arrested at the request of the Government of Chile so that he may be prosecuted on seven charges stemming from his alleged role as a leader of “Los Piratas,” the primary Chilean cell of the Venezuelan transnational criminal organization Tren de Aragua (TdA), the Justice Department announced today.
Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division
Venezuelan national and illegal alien Rafael Enrique Gamez Salas, 40, has been arrested at the request of the Government of Chile so that he may be prosecuted on seven charges stemming from his alleged role as a leader of “Los Piratas,” the primary Chilean cell of the Venezuelan transnational criminal organization Tren de Aragua (TdA).
Chile accuses Gamez Salas, who was arrested Wednesday, of directing multiple extortions and kidnappings on behalf of TdA, one of which resulted in the highly publicized murder of a former Venezuelan military officer. This arrest brings Gamez Salas, who also has criminal convictions in the United States for human smuggling and illegal reentry after deportation, one step closer to facing justice in Chile after illegally attempting to seek refuge in the United States.
“This illegal alien from Venezuela is an alleged leader of the foreign terrorist organization TdA,” said Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. “While in the United States, he was convicted of human smuggling and is accused by Chile of heinous violent crimes. This man is a clear public safety threat and should never have been in this country but reentered the United States illegally under the Biden Administration. The Justice Department, along with our federal and international partners, will continue to put safety and security first.”
“Rafael Enrique Gamez Salas’s arrest for purposes of extradition is evidence of the strong and ongoing cooperation between the United States and our foreign partners to combat transnational crime, dismantle foreign terrorist organizations like Tren de Aragua and hold members accountable for their heinous criminal acts,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “The United States is not a safe haven for dangerous criminal aliens. Thanks to the Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs, which worked extensively with Chilean authorities over the last year to obtain the facts and evidence necessary to initiate these extradition proceedings.”
“Our country must never become a refuge for criminal illegal aliens who are senior members of foreign terrorist organizations,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California. “We will continue to work closely with our overseas law enforcement partners to ensure this defendant will face justice in a Chilean courtroom.”
Gamez Salas, also known as “Adrian Rafael Gamez Finol” and “Turko,” is accused of overseeing the criminal activities of Los Piratas in Chile. According to Chilean authorities, he planned and coordinated kidnappings, homicides, extortions and other offenses on behalf of the TdA affiliate, which included instructing subordinates to obtain necessary resources to execute the offenses, and ensuring that financial resources generated for Los Piratas were transferred abroad. Chile is seeking Gamez Salas’s extradition so that he may stand trial for one count of criminal association, two counts of extortion, two counts of unjustified firearm discharge, one count of kidnapping resulting in homicide and one count of kidnapping for extortion, arising from separate crimes against multiple victims.
As set forth in the United States’ complaint for provisional arrest with a view toward extradition, Chile alleges, among other things, that Gamez Salas, acting under the supervision of senior TdA leadership, directed and planned the February 2024 kidnapping and murder in Santiago, Chile, of a former Lieutenant in the Venezuelan military.
According to Chile, members of Los Piratas arrived at the victim’s apartment building in the middle of the night armed with firearms and in a car equipped with a blue light in an apparent attempt to impersonate officers of the Chilean Investigative Police. After using a battering ram to force entry into the victim’s apartment, the perpetrators handcuffed the victim and forcibly removed him from the building and into a car.
Around one week later, in response to a tip from a witness, authorities discovered the victim’s body by drilling into the concrete floor of a makeshift dwelling in a housing development elsewhere in Santiago, Chile. The victim’s body was found covered in lime, concealed inside a suitcase, buried in concrete more than three feet deep and sealed beneath a concrete slab.
An autopsy determined that the victim’s cause of death was asphyxia due to hanging, and the victim’s body showed signs of suspension by the upper extremities, lesions consistent with torture and partial postmortem dismemberment. Testimony obtained in the Chilean investigation revealed that the victim’s kidnapping and murder was allegedly ordered by leaders of TdA and directed to be paid for from outside of Chile.
Additionally, in an intercepted conversation, Gamez Salas allegedly told other Los Piratas members that he had been assigned “from above” the task of coordinating and executing the crime.
In support of its other charges against Gamez Salas, Chile also alleges that he played a leading role in an April 2024 deadly armed confrontation that killed a Chilean police officer; February and June 2024 kidnappings for extortion; and a March 2024 attempted kidnapping, among other offenses.
In 2023, Gamez Salas was removed from the United States to Venezuela for having entered the United States illegally. He subsequently illegally reentered the United States and was prosecuted for human smuggling by the Val Verde County District Attorney’s Office in Texas. He was convicted in February 2025, after which he was indicted in the Southern District of Texas for illegally reentering the United States. He pled guilty to the illegal reentry charge in April 2025 and was serving his prison sentence in the Central District of California when he was arrested on the extradition warrant. Gamez Salas is also subject to an order of removal to Venezuela, which does not extradite its own nationals.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Marshals Service executed the provisional arrest warrant by transferring Gamez Salas from Federal Bureau of Prisons custody to its custody in the Central District of California. He appeared on Wednesday for his initial court appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles F. Eick for the Central District of California and was remanded into custody. The extradition matter for Gamez Salas is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney John J. Lulejian for the Central District of California and Trial Attorneys Reena T. Mittelman and Ruxandra Barbulescu of the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs.
Previously, in September 2025, the United States extradited to Chile another alleged TdA member, Edgar Javier Benitez Rubio, who was charged in Chile with multiple offenses arising from this same kidnapping and murder of the former Venezuelan Lieutenant. That extradition matter was handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana and the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs.
Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division
U.S. District Judge Jonathan E. Hawley sentenced 30-year-old Kristain Harris, of Memphis, Tennessee, to 120 months imprisonment on each of three counts of distribution of 50 or more grams of methamphetamine (“ice”) and one count of distribution of 5 grams or more of methamphetamine (“ice”), all to be served concurrently. She must also serve five years of supervised release.
Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division
Former mail recovery clerk Daniqua Clark has pleaded guilty to stealing cash, gift cards, and other items from the mail while working at the Atlanta Mail Recovery Center and fraudulently obtaining two pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, and former mail recovery clerk Deneeka Ferguson has pleaded guilty to participating in the mail theft scheme.
Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division
Thomas Venable, 59, of Washington, D.C., was found guilty by a Superior Court jury yesterday of charges stemming from an incident where he held his case worker hostage in his apartment in September 2025, announced U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro.
Source: United States Army
PICATINNY ARSENAL, N.J. – Army armament engineers here partnered with a pair of Pennsylvania companies, one with alloy expertise and the other with forging metals, to deliver a capable barrel for the Army’s next generation of small arms.
Carpenter Technology developed the alloy and Geissele Automatics (also known as GWYNEDD) developed the production techniques for the barrels, while the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Armaments Center provided the expertise in gun technology to deliver an innovation that is key to meeting the required capability.
This novel barrel design, created as part of two separate CRADAs (Cooperative Research and Development Agreements) between the Armaments Center, Geissele and Carpenter, relies on the alloy, GNB 200, which provides Army small caliber next generation weapons with higher tensile strength and, with it, better wear resistance.
This advancement came after several projects focusing specifically on barrel technology over the past decade.
According to general engineer Daniel Cler, the design’s principal investigator, DEVCOM had tested several “high alloy barrel materials” over the decade, seeking to help alleviate pressure buildup, corrosion and mechanical wear as next-generation weapons maintain significantly higher-pressure than their legacy counterparts, this could in turn worsen barrel wear.
In the past several years, the U.S. Army has attempted to shift away from using hazardous heavy metals such as hexavalent chromium coatings, which is still renowned for its longevity, but is known to cause significant health problems in production when hexavalent chromium is in solution.
Seeking to replace hexavelant chrome coatings with barrel materials that provide good wear and corrosion performance without coatings, the Army has performed research into a plethora of different metals. However, many of these materials were too hard to cold hammer forge, a method that is the current manufacturing technology for most military small arms. Because of this, the Armaments Center was refocusing on hammer forging and materials that were compatible with the process when it signed both CRADAs in 2022.
GNB 200 is, per Carpenter Technology’s website, a “premium remelted alloy steel specially formulated for high temperature wear resistance.” According to Cler, GNB 200 is near the upper limit of what can reliably be cold-hammer forged.
Carpenter Technology was already highly familiar with GNB 200, and as such provided samples for testing, along with several other materials. The Armaments Center gave guidance, processed information, provided support for analysis and result documentation and carried out accelerated wear testing for proposed alloys.
Work with Geissele focused on manufacturability and feasibility. Geissele cold hammer forged the barrels themselves, provided input and direction for coating alternatives and specifications, performed testing on barrels, and processed parameters on manufacturability. In this stage, the Armaments Center gave its expertise on barrel technologies, provided ammunition for testing and performed project oversight.
The parties involved tested the barrels in an M240L machine guns over the project’s third and final year, which ended in spring 2025. The material showed much better performance than the standard M240L barrel and now informs future Army next generation weapons.
GNB 200 continues to inform the next generation of Army small caliber weapons.Though the CRADA with Carpenter Technology has expired, DEVCOM renewed its CRADA with Geissele for another three years to continue development of barrel coatings.
A CRADA is a written agreement between one or more federal laboratories and one or more non-federal parties to work together on research or development.
The GNB 200 hammer forged barrel is not the only project made in collaboration with Geissele. The pair also collaborated on developing a new rifle profile which has been shown to further reduce wear and improve dispersion. This profile, classified as F41A21/18, received a patent in October 2025.
Cler said he was most proud of seeing a project he worked on informed next generation systems. He also noted how important it is to have some influence upon the industry in the correct direction, though he lamented not being able to get involved earlier.
“CRADA’s are a good way to influence industry so that as systems are developed to meet Army requirements, industry is ready to jump in with better solutions that are more aligned with the Army,” he said.
Source: United States Army
CAMP DARBY, Livorno – Soldiers from the Headquarters and Headquarters Company, U.S. Army Garrison Italy, underwent two days of intense training March 11-12, sharpening their skills for the upcoming Best Warrior Competition scheduled to take place in Germany later this month.
Capt. Anthony Dove, HHC commander, encouraged Soldiers to push themselves to their limits and represent their unit with pride.
“These training sessions are not just about preparing for the competition, they’re about building the skills and resilience that make us effective as a team and as individuals,” he said. “I’m proud of the dedication our Soldiers have shown.”
Soldiers kicked off the first day of training with a 12-mile ruck march at Leghorn Army Depot, followed by a land navigation course. On the second day of training, the focus shifted to sharpening Soldiers’ warfighting knowledge and battlefield skills.
Overall, the training event showcased the soldiers’ commitment to readiness and excellence, with Lt. Col. Jonathan Kuhn, USAG Italy director of emergency services and garrison provost marshal, in attendance.
“Participating in the Best Warrior Competition is crucial for Soldiers’ development,” Kuhn said. “It tests their combat and leadership skills, and enhances personal and professional growth, creating more capable warfighters.”
The Army Best Warrior Competition is an annual event that evaluates Soldiers and noncommissioned officers in areas such as physical fitness, marksmanship, and tactical knowledge. One of the main components in land navigation – a test of precision and endurance that challenges participants to make split-second decisions under pressure.
To simulate real-world combat scenarios, the training includes both daytime and nighttime navigation exercises, requiring Soldiers to locate specific points across the terrain using only their tools and their training.
Kuhn noted that having a Best Warrior competitor representing Camp Darby perfectly reflects the local community’s spirit.
“It showcases the pinnacle of Soldier readiness and lethality,” he said. “Having a contender in this competition reflects our installation’s overall commitment to excellence.”
Kuhn challenged the Soldiers to lead by example and lean into their expertise.
“Embrace the challenge,” he said, “you were selected for this opportunity based on your total competence. Represent USAG Italy with pride and continue to inspire the Soldiers who serve alongside you!”
Source: United States Army
LANDSTUHL, Germany — For some, leadership is a title. For a veterinary food inspector with Veterinary Readiness Activity, Rheinland Pfalz, it’s an action. It’s about leading from the front, pushing through adversity, and proving that with the right team, any obstacle can be overcome.
Currently serving as the Noncommissioned Officer in Charge for the Benelux Branch Sgt. First Class Marissa Henson’s eleven-year career is a testament to her philosophy of resilience, teamwork and stepping outside her comfort zone.
Most recently, Henson’s tenacity was on full display during the German Armed Forces Proficiency Badge competition. This multinational event, hosted by the Bundeswehr, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Army in the Kaiserslautern area, is a grueling test of physical and mental endurance.
For Henson, the decision to participate was almost an afterthought. “I didn’t originally plan to compete but there was another spot available so I took it,” she recalled. “I saw it as my last hooah before I PCS in June.”
Despite her impromptu decision, she not only competed but excelled, earning the title of top-performing female. The achievement was a surprise, even to her.
“I felt fairly unprepared. I didn’t train up for it,” Henson admitted. The competition presented significant hurdles, most notably the ruck march. “The ruck march was the most challenging out of the event,” she said. “I’m short so I basically had to do a light jog the entire time.”
Pushing through the pain and exhaustion, she didn’t just complete the event; she embraced the challenge and emerged victorious, embodying the very advice she offers to her Soldiers:
“Push yourself and you might surprise yourself with how much you’re capable of. Be scared but still do it. Just go for it.”
This spirit of perseverance was forged long before the GAFPB. Henson’s nine-month deployment to Afghanistan crystalized her understanding of teamwork and resilience. Facing the holidays far from home, she learned a lesson that has defined her career.
“I truly enjoy the cohesion of the team,” she reflected. “I deployed to Afghanistan and was gone for the holidays but I learned you can do anything with the right team.” This belief in the power of a cohesive unit is the bedrock of her leadership style.
As a leader, Henson doesn’t direct from the sidelines. She leads by doing.
“How do I teach my Soldiers about leadership? By doing it with them. I don’t tell them what to do, I set the example by doing it alongside them.”
This approach fosters trust and confidence, creating an environment where Soldiers have each other’s backs because they know their leader has theirs.
Throughout her career, Henson has consistently sought out opportunities to grow and challenge herself. During a posting in Hawaii, she took on the demanding role of NCOIC for the Rim of the Pacific exercise, the world’s largest international maritime warfare exercise.
The position offered a “great opportunity to work alongside our Navy and Air Force counterparts,” broadening her perspective and enhancing her ability to operate in a joint environment.
She has also competed in Best Warrior competitions and, in a shift from her usual role as a competitor, ran the water survival lane at the MEDCOM Best Medic Competition.
Her experiences, from deployment to multinational exercises, have given her a profound appreciation for the importance of readiness. Her time in Kaiserslautern has offered a different pace, but her past has informed her present.
She understands “why readiness is so important, why we train and why we train the way we train.”
Henson’s impact on the Veterinary Readiness Activity, Rheinland-Pfalz is significant.
She has been instrumental in assisting with the Best Warrior competition, ranges, and field training exercises. Looking to the future, she is planning an ATX and K9 TCCC for Soldiers from Wiesbaden, Belgium, Spangdahlem, Baumholder, and Kaiserslautern, continuing to build that critical team cohesion and readiness across the region.
What started as a plan to serve four years has evolved into a dedicated career. Now at eleven years of service and with a PCS to Virginia on the horizon, Sgt. 1st Class Henson has no plans of stopping, aiming for twenty years or more.
“I just really enjoy what I do.” Henson said.
Her journey is a powerful reminder that the greatest growth happens just outside our comfort zone and that with trust and teamwork, there is no limit to what can be achieved.
Source: United States Army
CAMP BONDSTEEL, Kosovo — Task Force Medical Soldiers with NATO’s Kosovo Force provided lifesaving medical training to local health care providers at a clinic in the municipality of Obiliq/Obilić, near Pristina, Feb. 24, reinforcing KFOR’s stabilization mission by improving local medical capabilities and building strong community partnerships.
The training was part of a formal handover between KFOR 35 and KFOR 36, a routine transition in which outgoing medics transfer responsibilities, lessons learned and ongoing outreach projects to the incoming team to ensure continuity of care and community engagement. The turnover included briefings on previously assessed clinic needs, scheduled outreach events and logistics for future training missions.
Louisiana Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Kyle Boudoin, assigned to the 256th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, led the outgoing team, while Florida Army National Guard Sgt. Benford Rosenfeldt, assigned to the 53rd IBCT, assumed duties with the incoming rotation. The two led training at the clinic, ranging from basic Army Combat Lifesaver skills and CPR to advanced cardiac life support.
Boudoin reflected on handing over responsibilities to his counterpart and how to make the transition successful.
“It’s important to leave the next team with clear plans and strong relationships,” he said. “We walked them through the clinics, shared what worked and what didn’t, and introduced Benford so he could immediately build on that trust. Knowing the mission continues smoothly here is the best part of turning over the job.”
The training also included trauma care focused on blunt-force, head and multisystem injuries using the MARCH algorithm — massive hemorrhage, airway, respiration, circulation and head injury/hypothermia. Task Force Medical’s outreach mission includes school visits to teach CPR and partnerships with clinics to provide advanced, tailored training to meet the needs of local Kosovo communities.
Training was coordinated using information from KFOR Civil-Military Cooperation and included hands-on practice and guidance on acquiring essential supplies.
Rosenfeldt, a paramedic at a Level II trauma center in St. Petersburg, Florida, said the goal is to strengthen local clinical knowledge and help providers request appropriate resources in the future.
“A lot of these clinics are limited on resources and we’re trying to advance their capabilities and knowledge so they know what to request in the future and where they should be,” he said. “We’re there to guide them and give them the clinical knowledge to set them up for success.”
Both Soldiers serve as 68W combat medics and evacuation platoon sergeants with Task Force Medical. Their civilian experience — Boudoin in paramedicine and emergency management, and Rosenfeldt as a career paramedic — informs the practical, locally tailored training they deliver.
“This being my first event, I think it went really well. Kosovo people are very appreciative and open to us being here and the training,” Rosenfeldt said. “I think as far as knowledge base, there’s a slight knowledge gap, but I think they have the hearts and the minds to try to get up to speed with best practices in medicine and we’re there to help them with that.”
By improving local medical response, Task Force Medical supports KFOR’s broader mandate to maintain a safe and secure environment and strengthen local institutions. Regular outreach, typically conducted about every other month, fosters trust, expands medical capacity and leaves a lasting capability in communities across Kosovo.
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