By WMBD TV

BLOOMINGTON – A Bloomington couple will go to federal prison for illegally distributing hundreds of prescription pills though the mail, some of which turned out to be a type of fentanyl.

Christina Noonan, 44, was sentenced to 70 months in prison while her husband, Wesley, 44, received a 4-year prison term. Both were sentenced by U.S. District Judge James Shadid in Peoria’s federal court.

Christina Noonan pleaded guilty in August 2023, and Wesley Noonan pleaded guilty in November 2023.

Although the Noonans distributed a diverse spectrum of pills, the search warrant on their home yielded approximately 1,750 pills marked as Adderall, but which in fact tested positive as para-Fluorofentanyl, a type of fentanyl.

Both were arrested in April 2022 after agents with the U.S. Postal Service and the Illinois State Police delivered a package to their house that allegedly had several hundred grams of Adderall and Percocet.

She admitted she was a ‘mother wrapped up in something really bad’
When they searched the couple’s Bloomington house, they allegedly found bins used to store and separate various pill types, shipping envelopes and two semi-automatic rifles.

Agents questioned Christiana Noonan who said she was a mother who had gotten wrapped up in “something really bad.” She said she had been working with a person known to her as “Jack” since the summer of 2020 to ship pills to various places in the United States. She found him, she told police, after looking online for a way to obtain pain pills.

She would make $30 for each shipment, she told police and Jack would send her packages with lists of people and orders. She was to repackage them and then ship them out to “Jack’s” customers around the country.

At one point, she said, she was getting so many packages from “Jack” that she had to use P.O. boxes or her mother-in-law’s address. Most of the pills, she thought, were Ambien, Adderall or oxycodone, she told the police but admitted she didn’t know for sure as the pills were not usually labeled.

A distribution log revealed that Christina, acting with Wesley’s assistance, mailed over 1,750 parcels containing more 250,000 pills to locations in all 50 states between February 2021 and April 2022. The shipments included parcels logged as Tramadol, Zolpidem, Cathinone, Adderall, Lorazepam, Hydrocodone, Percocet, and other substances.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald L. Hanna said the case demonstrates how illegal drug distribution is ever-evolving and how law enforcement will use all available tools to counter it.

“It also shows why taking illegally obtained pills is extremely dangerous. As documented in DEA’s One Pill Can Kill campaign, an illegally obtained pill, often manufactured overseas, can appear to be one substance, like Adderall, and in fact be something very different and deadly like fentanyl,” he said.

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