Prosecutors say California inmate directed large Alaska drug ring

From a prison cell in California, federal prosecutors allege, a 56-year-old inmate directed an Alaska drug trafficking ring that in recent years smuggled huge quantities of fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine to some of the state’s smallest villages through a network of postal shippers and drug couriers.

In Alaska, meanwhile, a woman incarcerated at Hiland Mountain Correctional Center recruited a fellow inmate on the verge of release to join the drug ring, federal prosecutors wrote in an indictment unsealed in October. That woman, the U.S. Attorney now alleges, quickly rose through the group’...