New York Mills man gets seven-year sentence in meth case

A New York Mills man will spend seven years in prison after a controlled meth buy that began with a tip to the West Central Minnesota drug task force and ended with a jury conviction in Fergus Falls. Jeffery Robert Kampsula, 57, was sentenced to 85 months in the Minnesota Correctional Facility in St. Cloud after a February jury found him guilty of first-degree and third-degree sale of drugs.

The case turned on a buy arranged for Aug. 7, 2024. According to prosecutors, the Minnesota West Central Drug and Violent Crime Task Force received information from a confidential informant, then agents met with the informant, provided cash to buy 28 grams of methamphetamine and equipped the informant with a wireless recording device. When the informant returned, agents recovered two baggies of a white crystalline substance that tested positive for meth and weighed about 26.5 grams.

That evidence carried the case from the field to the courtroom. First-degree controlled-substance crimes rank among Minnesota’s most serious drug offenses, and the state’s sentencing guidelines set the presumptive punishment for felony cases. In Kampsula’s case, the final sentence matched the seriousness of the charges that jurors accepted in February.

The investigation also shows how meth cases are often built in Otter Tail County and surrounding communities. The West Central Minnesota Drug and Violent Crime Task Force is a regional unit staffed by officers from agencies across its six-county, six-city coverage area, working with local, state and federal partners to stem illegal narcotics. In practice, that means a tip in a place like New York Mills can bring together officers, recording equipment and controlled currency in a single operation.

For Otter Tail County, the case lands in a broader effort to confront drug trafficking as both a policing issue and a public-health problem. County leaders say Otter Tail County expects to receive about $3.1 million in opioid-settlement funds, money that can go toward treatment, prevention and harm reduction. Kampsula’s sentence closes one meth case, but it also reflects the larger reach of local drug enforcement now moving through New York Mills, Fergus Falls and the rest of the county.