Sanford man gets 25 years for cocaine, firearms trafficking case

A Sanford drug stash house that investigators say sat in a residential neighborhood and doubled as a weapons cache has landed Terrence Denard Perkins in federal prison for 25 years, a sentence prosecutors say is meant to pull a cartel-linked cocaine pipeline out of Seminole County.

U.S. District Judge Paul G. Byron sentenced Perkins, 46, of Sanford, after a federal jury found him guilty on Nov. 20, 2025, of possession with intent to distribute cocaine, possession of firearms in furtherance of drug trafficking and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The court also ordered him to forfeit hundreds of rounds of ammunition and more than a dozen firearms, including AR-style rifles, handguns and a machinegun.

The case started as a narcotics investigation by the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office’s City/County Investigative Bureau, which learned of a planned robbery at Perkins’ stash house in a Sanford neighborhood. Deputies and federal agents moved in with a search warrant on Jan. 9, 2024, inside a home occupied by Perkins’s elderly stepfather. What they found, prosecutors said, shows how deeply the operation had taken root in the city’s neighborhoods.

Investigators recovered an electronic money counter, revolvers and a loaded AR-15 hidden behind a sofa cushion. In a backyard carport, they found bags of cocaine and a full cutting, packaging and distribution station. In broken-down cars parked behind the house, agents said they found 18 sealed and stamped kilogram bricks of cocaine, along with additional firearms that included AR-15s, handguns, an AK-47 rifle, a machinegun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Prosecutors said the evidence went beyond the house itself. Witnesses, financial records, DNA evidence, videos saved on Perkins’s stash-house surveillance system and his own social media posts were used to show that he had been trafficking kilogram quantities of cocaine in Sanford for years through cartel-linked suppliers. They described Perkins as a seven-time convicted felon, with prior convictions that included conspiracy to traffic cocaine, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and aggravated fleeing and eluding.

The case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office’s CCIB, with help from the Drug Enforcement Administration, as part of Project Safe Neighborhoods. U.S. Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe announced the sentence, and ATF Tampa Division Acting Special Agent in Charge Cheryl Harrell said the result makes Central Florida safer by keeping a violent trafficker behind bars.