News

Henderson County man sentenced to federal prison in drug conspiracy case

By Amy McCraw, Published: November 21, 2025

A 38-year-old Flat Rock man was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison last week after pleading guilty in June to charges related to conspiring while in state prison in Georgia to distribute fentanyl and methamphetamine.

In addition to the time in federal prison, Les Corey Peak was also sentenced to five years of supervised probation, Russ Ferguson, the U.S. Attorney for Western North Carolina, announced in a news release.
Peak pleaded guilty on June 23 to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute controlled substances. He remains in federal custody pending placement by the Federal Bureau of Prisons at a designated facility.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher S. Hess of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Asheville handled the case involving Peak.
Court records and criminal proceedings showed that while incarcerated in the Georgia Department of Corrections, Peak conspired with Zachery Micah Rice and others from 2021 to 2023 to distribute methamphetamine and fentanyl in Buncombe, Henderson and Transylvania counties and elsewhere, federal prosecutors said.
Using contraband phones, Peak worked with his Atlanta-based supplier to arrange bulk drug purchases and coordinated with Rice to arrange the pickups, the evidence showed. Rice then transported the drugs back to Western North Carolina for further distribution through a local network of traffickers and dealers. Rice was sentenced in May to more than 28 years in prison for his role in the conspiracy.
During one of the transactions Peak set up, law officers who stopped and searched Rice’s vehicle seized more than 11.5 kilograms of methamphetamine, a .40-caliber pistol modified to fully automatic with a machine gun conversion device known as a “Glock switch” and more than $32,683 in cash. Investigators later executed search warrants at stash houses and a storage unit used by Rice, recovering kilogram quantities of fentanyl and methamphetamine supplied by the Atlanta-based source, multiple firearms, including high-capacity magazines ammunition, digital scales, drug paraphernalia and more than $27,470 in cash, the U.S. attorney said.