ATLANTA — An Alpharetta man made his first appearance in federal court on Thursday after being arrested in what is being hailed as the largest fentanyl bust in state history.
Antwuan Brown, 39, has been charged with possession with the intent to distribute fentanyl.
He was arrested on March 21, 2025, as part of a drug trafficking investigation that led authorities to a Sandy Springs apartment.
Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne broke this story last week during Channel 2 Action News at 6 p.m. after police found enough suspected fentanyl to kill 2.5 million people inside Brown’s car.
“It was shocking when we found that amount of fentanyl in our city. You can compare it to killing our entire population of the city of Sandy Springs,” Maj. Forrest Bohannon from the Sandy Springs Police Department said. “We found two weapons in this apartment complex where we found these fentanyl pills. There are children and adults and several innocent people that live in that area. In two suitcases, we found approximately 240,000 pills, which we believe to contain fentanyl.”
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The haul also included smaller amounts of cocaine, methamphetamine, and PCP, but most of what investigators found is suspected to be fentanyl, which kills about 70,000 Americans a year.
The DEA told Winne at the time that the counterfeit pills were made to look like oxycodone, a painkiller that is one of the most abused drugs here and elsewhere.
DEA said the drugs were likely tied to cartels.
“Someone with this quantity of fentanyl has direct connections to one of three cartels: Sinaloa Cartel, Jalisco New Generation, or Cjng, or Nuevo La Familia Cartel. And we’re confident that we’ll be able to track this down to one of those cartels,” DEA Special Agent in Charge Jae Chung said.
Chung believes most of the powdered suspected fentanyl and the pills would’ve been bound for metro Atlanta streets.
“The suspect had a lengthy criminal history to include violent offenses with a firearm, drug trafficking and also, he was wanted in two different states,” Chung said.
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