A Rhode Island woman has been sentenced in federal court in Boston after prosecutors said she took a central, hands-on role in laundering nearly half a million dollars tied to her then-boyfriend’s fentanyl operation, routing the cash through a Massachusetts marijuana dispensary to make it look like legitimate investment money.

Carolina Correa, 35, of Cranston, was sentenced on Feb. 4, 2026, by U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin to 42 months in prison, followed by five years of supervised release. The court also ordered Correa to pay a $150,000 fine and forfeit $350,000. In July 2025, Correa pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering conspiracy.

Federal authorities described Correa, an entrepreneur, real estate owner, and fundraiser, as the leader of a sophisticated multi-state laundering scheme that moved approximately $450,000 in fentanyl trafficking proceeds. Those proceeds, prosecutors said, were generated by her then-boyfriend, Jasdrual “Josh” Perez, a Rhode Island man who ran what amounted to a counterfeit-pill “pill mill” and oversaw a wide-reaching fentanyl distribution network.

After the successful movement of $450,000 of Perez’s drug proceeds, the photograph below was posted on her social media account:

Perez’s case is central to understanding why investigators treated Correa’s laundering activity as both high-impact and highly calculated. Perez was sentenced to 22.5 years in federal prison on Dec. 16, 2024, after authorities said he led a large-scale, multi-state fentanyl trafficking organization. He pleaded guilty in August 2024 to conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 400 grams or more of fentanyl. Prosecutors said his Rhode Island-based operation manufactured tens of thousands of counterfeit fentanyl pills intentionally designed to resemble legitimate prescription opioids, including oxycodone and Percocet. The pills weren’t just trafficked as fentanyl, investigators said; they were pressed and presented to look like widely recognized pain medications, a tactic that authorities often say increases danger by misleading buyers about what they’re taking.

According to the government, Perez operated out of Providence and Cranston and distributed more than 200 kilograms of fentanyl across multiple states, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Texas, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The scale of the operation was reinforced by what agents seized during the investigation. In February 2022, law enforcement recovered two industrial pill presses, approximately 20 kilograms of fentanyl, about 50,000 pressed pills, and more than $62,000 in cash, evidence prosecutors pointed to as proof that Perez’s organization wasn’t simply reselling drugs, but manufacturing and producing large quantities of counterfeit pills for broad distribution.

Perez also drew public attention because of family ties to local law enforcement leadership. Prosecutors noted that he is the nephew of Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez and Sgt. Andres Perez. The government highlighted what it described as the audacity of running such an operation while having close relatives in high-ranking roles, but also stated there was no evidence his relatives were involved. The police chief publicly stated that his nephew received no protection.

Perez’s punishment extended beyond prison time. Along with the 22.5-year sentence, he was ordered to serve five years of supervised release, pay a $1 million fine, and forfeit his Rhode Island home. Against that backdrop, prosecutors said Correa’s work wasn’t incidental or passive; it was a deliberate effort to help conceal and legitimize the profits of a major fentanyl enterprise.

Investigators said that in late 2021 through early 2022, Perez enlisted Correa specifically because she was financially savvy and capable of moving money in ways that wouldn’t immediately raise alarms. Prosecutors said she agreed to help him conceal drug proceeds and then built a plan around an attractive cover story: investing in a Massachusetts marijuana dispensary that was actively seeking funding.

Correa reportedly contacted a friend who was opening the dispensary and looking for investors. She agreed to find those investors and, in return, would receive an ownership stake and the title of CFO. By January 2022, Correa indicated she had found investors for the dispensary, but prosecutors said the “investors” were not what they appeared. Authorities identified them as a real estate investor based in North Carolina with whom Correa had a long-time personal relationship, not a purely professional one, along with that individual’s associate.

From there, the laundering plan moved quickly and, prosecutors argued, methodically. Correa enlisted a friend to drive $350,000 in Perez’s drug proceeds from Rhode Island to the North Carolina contacts. Financial records later showed that the North Carolina “investors” wired $350,000 back in two transactions, from two different business accounts, in the amounts of $250,000 and $200,000, to the bank account of an attorney for the marijuana dispensary. After landing in the attorney’s account, the funds were transferred again into the marijuana dispensary’s business account, a step prosecutors said helped complete the illusion of legitimate capital entering the business through conventional channels.

Authorities said Correa layered additional details onto the story to strengthen that illusion. She used her work email to communicate with the North Carolina “investors,” and prosecutors said she drafted sham loan paperwork and promissory notes for herself, the dispensary’s CEO, and the North Carolina contacts to sign. Those documents, investigators said, were intended to paper over the true origin of the money and make it appear as if the funds were the product of ordinary financing arrangements rather than fentanyl proceeds.

The government also alleged the scheme didn’t stop with the initial cash movement. Correa and Perez facilitated an additional $100,000 in laundering into the dispensary through the business bank account of a Rhode Island real estate investment company tied to one of Perez’s friends. Bank records, prosecutors said, corroborated those transactions as part of the broader effort to inject drug money into the legitimate financial system.

What prosecutors emphasized most wasn’t just the mechanics of the laundering, but the contrast between Correa’s public persona and what investigators said she was doing behind the scenes. The government portrayed her as leveraging a polished professional reputation to present herself as a legitimate fundraiser and dealmaker who was helping a cannabis business secure serious investment, while intercepted communications showed her privately framing the process as a hustle to “clean” Perez’s drug money, with the goal of financial benefit for herself through business, financial, and real estate activity.

In the government’s telling, the case is a snapshot of how large-scale fentanyl organizations try to survive and thrive financially: they don’t just make money, they need ways to spend it, store it, and explain it. Prosecutors argued that Correa’s role was to provide that pathway, taking profits from a counterfeit-pill operation spanning multiple states and steering them into what looked, on paper, like ordinary investments in a legal business.

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