Federal Jury Convicts Wellsville’s Simon Gogolack of Fentanyl Distribution Resulting in Death, Plus Kidnapping and Witness-Tampering Counts

ANALYSIS · September 11, 2026 (USAO-WDNY announcement / Friday jury verdict) Slug: wellsville-fentanyl-distribution-conviction Package note: Storm Wire optional full-ish second pack. USAO Western District of New York jury conviction (not a plea, not a sentence). Live justice.gov page blocked this pass by Akamai; body reconstructed from a Wayback 200 snapshot. Careful on (1) death-result / distribution caption vs homicide, (2) title “witness intimidation” vs body “witness tampering,” (3) 20-year mandatory minimum / max life as unsentenced statutory exposure, not an imposed term, (4) dismissed pretrial kill-conspiracy counts that are not this verdict.

Primary sources

  • Assigned primary (USAO Western District of New York): Federal jury convicts Wellsville man on multiple charges, including distribution of fentanyl causing death, kidnapping and witness intimidation — dated Friday, September 11, 2026; “Updated September 11, 2026.” Live page blocked this pass by an Akamai interstitial (WebFetch + curl). Full text retrieved from Wayback snapshot 20260912015457 (Sept. 12, 2026, 01:54 UTC, CDX status 200, length 16317): https://web.archive.org/web/20260912015457/https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdny/pr/federal-jury-convicts-wellsville-man-multiple-charges-including-distribution-fentanyl. A second CDX 200 exists at 20260913011947 (body timed out this pass).
  • USAO dateline (distributor, not the PR body): PUBT listing — “United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York 09/11/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 09/11/2026 17:50”; “published this content on September 11, 2026 … Distributed … September 11, 2026 at 23:50 UTC.” Exact USAO headline. PUBT did not host the article text (“The text of this article is not available at the moment”).
  • Local teaser (paywalled): Olean Times Herald, Sept. 11, 2026 — Jim Eckstrom. Headline: “Wellsville man guilty in drug case that resulted in death of federal witness.” Visible lede: “A 42-year-old Wellsville man was convicted by a federal jury of numerous drug charges — includin…” Full story not retrieved (paywall).

Court record (findable; verdict form not retrieved)

  • Docket: United States v. Gogolack, No. 1:23-cr-00099 (EAW), U.S. District Court, Western District of New York. Filed September 13, 2023. Assigned Chief U.S. District Judge Elizabeth A. Wolford. CourtListener search metadata: docket hubs include 67814620 (Simon Gogolack; PACER case id 147351). Docket HTML CloudFront 403 this pass; count-by-count verdict PDF not in RECAP this pass.
  • Magistrate complaint (prior, terminated): United States v. Simon Gogolack, No. 1:23-mj-01115, filed Aug. 18, 2023, terminated Sept. 13, 2023. Detention-hearing transcript (RECAP): gov.uscourts.nywd.146969.13.0.pdf — 2023 charging summary, not the 2026 verdict. Early five-count frame (narcotics conspiracy July 2–Aug. 8, 2023; drug-involved premises at 296 Scott Avenue, Wellsville; 924(c); felon-in-possession). Conspiracy max 20 years, no mandatory minimum on that 2023 count-one description. Do not treat the 2023 complaint as the trial indictment or as the verdict.
  • Pretrial order (PACERMonitor snippet, Dkt. 1089): trial as to Gogolack then set August 18, 2026; government had dismissed certain counts; court granted MIL barring jury-nullification argument; declined to bar a defense argument that Crystal Quinn committed suicide; government may introduce evidence of a fentanyl-and-Xanax distribution conspiracy; “hitman services” request denied as moot because the government was no longer pursuing it. Full PDF not retrieved (PACERMonitor returned an HTML gate).
  • Related, separate case — do not conflate: Peter Gerace Jr.’s December 2024 WDNY jury conviction (Buffalo News: guilty on all but one count; later 25-year sentence per WIVB). Gogolack was split off after prosecutors dismissed two retaliation/tampering conspiracy-to-kill-Quinn counts in June 2026.

Core Tension

USAO packages a Friday jury conviction as “distribution of fentanyl causing death, kidnapping and witness intimidation” with a lumped “20 years mandatory minimum / maximum of life,” and DiGiacomo frames it as accountability for “violence and devastation” from drug trafficking — while the office is announcing an unsentenced verdict (sentencing calendared Feb. 9, 2027), the 20-to-life line is statutory exposure on “the charges” rather than a term imposed, the title’s “witness intimidation” is “witness tampering” in the body, and prosecutors had already dismissed the conspiracy-to-kill-a-witness counts, so this is a death-result distribution case (statutory theory does not require intent to kill) plus remaining drug, gun, kidnapping, and tampering counts — not a murder-plot conviction.

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