BOSTON — A Lawrence man has pleaded guilty in federal court in Boston to taking part in a drug trafficking organization known as La Culebra that made counterfeit pills in a Methuen apartment, the U.S. attorney's office in Massachusetts said Friday.

Jose Vasquez Lantigua, 48, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute controlled substances and to possess them with intent to distribute and manufacture. Senior U.S. District Judge Patti B. Saris scheduled sentencing for Jan. 28, 2027. The charge carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years and up to life in prison.

Lantigua was arrested and charged in August 2025 along with Manuel Santana-Soto, prosecutors said.

According to charging documents, the group ran a large drug manufacturing operation inside a third-floor apartment in Methuen, where investigators had bought drugs from Joshua Morales, a runner associated with La Culebra. When investigators searched the apartment, they found fresh footprints in powder believed to be drugs. The footprints led down an interior staircase to a second-floor apartment, where Lantigua and Santana-Soto were found wearing flip-flops whose soles matched the prints, prosecutors said.

The woman who rented the second-floor apartment told police the two men did not have permission to be there and did not have a key. Investigators believe the men fled the third-floor unit and broke into hers before officers went in, according to prosecutors.

In the third-floor apartment, investigators found an automated pill press and multiple kilograms of counterfeit Adderall and Percocet pills believed to contain fentanyl and methamphetamine, along with blenders, scales, cutting and binding agents, and bags of suspected fentanyl and methamphetamine powder, prosecutors said.

Santana-Soto pleaded guilty in May and is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 8. Morales pleaded guilty in March and is set for sentencing Nov. 10. A fourth member of the group, Aris Arvelo Gonzalez, was charged in November 2025 after investigators identified a second manufacturing site; he pleaded guilty in September and is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 13, 2027.

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