A New Haven man who regularly picked up counterfeit pills from a drug “lab” in a rented East Haven garage has been sentenced to more than 12 years in federal prison.
U.S. District Judge Alvin W. Thompson sentenced Emanuel Payton, 35, in Hartford on Tuesday, Oct. 20, to 151 months in prison, followed by five years of supervised release, U.S. Attorney David X. Sullivan announced. Payton pleaded guilty on Nov. 18, 2025, to conspiracy to manufacture, distribute and possess with intent to distribute controlled substances. He has been detained since his arrest.
The garage on Tyler Street Extension
According to court documents and statements in court, as summarized by the U.S. Attorney’s Office:
- In June 2023, law enforcement got word that Payton’s co-conspirator, Kelldon Hinton, was using a pill press to make large quantities of counterfeit pills.
- Investigators say Hinton bought protonitazene, dimethylpentylone, xylazine and other substances, plus pill-press parts, from China and elsewhere, and pressed them into fake oxycodone, Xanax and Adderall tablets in a garage he rented in East Haven. In text messages, Hinton called the garage his “lab.”
- Prosecutors describe protonitazene as a Schedule I synthetic opioid three times more potent than fentanyl. The pills also contained methamphetamine.
- Hinton sold the pills on the dark web and shipped more than 1,300 packages through the U.S. Mail between February 2023 and February 2024. He also supplied Payton and other associates in Connecticut, who resold them.
- Payton visited the garage regularly to pick up hundreds of pills at a time.
What investigators found
Hinton, Payton and others were arrested on Sept. 5, 2024. That day, court-authorized searches included the garage on Tyler Street Extension in East Haven, which turned up about 1 million pills weighing nearly 100 kilograms, about 300 grams of cocaine, two large pill presses, pill-making equipment and drug ledgers. One of the presses could turn out 100,000 pills an hour, according to the release.
Investigators later learned that Hinton also rented a unit at a storage facility in West Haven. A court-authorized search there on Sept. 18, 2024, found hundreds of thousands more pills, weighing nearly another 100 kilograms.
The release did not give a street number for the garage.
The case so far
Hinton has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
The DEA New Haven Tactical Diversion Squad and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service led the investigation, with help from the DEA Chicago Cyber Task Force, Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and the East Haven Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Lauren C. Clark and Konstantin Lantsman are prosecuting.
Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Connecticut, Oct. 20, 2026.
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