A Dallas man has been handed a weighty 18-year sentence in federal prison for his involvement in a heinous drug trafficking operation that seemed to run like a never-ending illicit carnival at the BuZen Suites Hotel. The offender, 44-year-old Kenneth Ray Peters, was part of a conspiracy that turned hotel rooms into round-the-clock distribution centers for a cocktail of drugs, including fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine, details the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
These activities stretched across 2022 and into March of the succeeding year, before Peters pled guilty in January 2025, a guilty plea that led up to today’s sentencing, where Judge Barbara M. G. Lynn laid down the law with 216 months behind bars. The court had before it a tableau of evidence displaying the bustling drug trade at BuZen Suites, including a security camera’s daily recordings that showcased a grim insight into the rooms, where drugs were bagged, weighed, and parceled out for street delivery, a detailed narrative ripped from the hotel’s veiled interior.
Peters himself admitted that violence was a common thread stitching together the operation—beatings, a pistol whipping, and even a chilling incident where a woman’s foot was burned with a lighter after overdosing on drugs bought there. On a day that likely felt like the hammer of justice for law enforcement, April 19, 2023, saw raids bringing the hotel’s drug dealings to a screeching halt as agents uncovered illicit substances, weapons, and drug paraphernalia in notable quantities…