A Michigan man who moved nearly half a kilogram of fentanyl through Charleston in the spring of 2025 — while already carrying a federal drug conviction in the same courthouse — was sentenced on Monday to 12 years in federal prison. Willie Davis McCall III, 43, of Warren, Michigan, known as "Primo" and "Ill Will," received the sentence from U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin for distribution of 40 grams or more of fentanyl, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of West Virginia announced. He will also serve 10 years of supervised release after the prison term.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
The court sentenced McCall as a career offender, a designation that sharply raises the punishment for repeat drug traffickers. As part of his guilty plea, McCall admitted that between April and June 2025 he distributed or possessed with intent to distribute nearly 500 grams of fentanyl in and around Charleston, the state capital, and that the cash seized from his home was drug proceeds.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Three sales to an informant, $2,700 each
According to court documents and statements made in court, the case was built on a series of controlled buys. On April 3, 2025, McCall sold approximately 55.40 grams of fentanyl to a confidential informant in Charleston for $2,700. On April 30, 2025, he sold approximately 55.53 grams of a substance containing fentanyl to the informant for another $2,700, conducting that transaction while sitting in a parked vehicle in Charleston. On June 11, 2025, he sold approximately 55.57 grams more, again for $2,700.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
On June 17, 2025, officers executed a search warrant at the Charleston residence where McCall was living. In his bedroom closet they found approximately 322.16 grams of fentanyl packed in six bags, together with $5,557 in cash. McCall admitted he planned to distribute the seized fentanyl in and around the Southern District of West Virginia, and that the money was proceeds of drug trafficking.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
"Career drug traffickers should expect serious consequences"
"Career drug traffickers who continue to distribute fentanyl despite prior convictions should expect to face serious consequences," United States Attorney Moore Capito said. "This defendant repeatedly violated the law and contributed to the flow of a highly lethal substance into our communities. We remain committed to aggressively prosecuting fentanyl dealers and seeking significant penalties for those who endanger public safety through the distribution of this deadly drug." Capito commended the investigative work of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Charleston Police Department. Assistant United States Attorney Lesley C. Shamblin prosecuted the case, which is recorded on PACER as Case No. 2:25-cr-192.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Fentanyl is lethal in doses measured in milligrams — the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has long warned that about two milligrams, roughly a few grains of salt, can kill. Prosecutors say McCall admitted handling nearly 500 grams of the drug in about ten weeks, and kept another 322 grams bagged in a bedroom closet. That is why a street-level series of $2,700 hand-to-hand sales drew a federal case, a career-offender label and a 12-year sentence rather than a local possession charge.
A record that follows him from Michigan and Ohio
The career-offender finding rested on McCall's history. He admitted he was previously convicted in the same federal district — the Southern District of West Virginia — of distribution of methamphetamine, on July 26, 2017, a serious drug offense for which he was sentenced to more than a year in prison. Federal appellate records from that earlier case show his original 10-year sentence for a methamphetamine sale near Nitro was vacated by the Fourth Circuit in 2019 because the sentencing judge had improperly relied on his out-of-state residency, and the case was reassigned for resentencing — a reminder of how long McCall's Charleston-area drug dealing has been before the courts.
Source: FindLaw / U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
His wider criminal history, set out in the plea, includes multiple prior convictions in Michigan and Ohio, including carjacking, assault with intent to murder, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, possession of a firearm by a prohibited person, and domestic violence.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Part of two national enforcement drives
The U.S. Attorney's Office said the case is part of Operation Take Back America, the Justice Department's nationwide initiative against cartels, transnational criminal organisations and violent crime, and of Project Safe Neighborhoods, the department's violent-crime reduction partnership between federal, state, local and tribal agencies. When McCall pleaded guilty earlier this year, prosecutors had set out the scale he faced: a mandatory minimum of 10 years and up to life in prison, at least eight years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $8 million. Monday's 12-year sentence sits just above that mandatory floor, driven by the career-offender designation.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
What happens next
McCall, 43, will serve the 12-year term in federal prison — there is no parole in the federal system — followed by a full decade of supervised release, during which a violation can return him to prison. The sentence closes the Charleston chapter of a trafficking run that federal records show stretched, on and off, from his 2017 methamphetamine conviction in the same district to the fentanyl sales of 2025.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice