Inside a bootlegging pipeline into dry Alaska

In much of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, alcohol is illegal — and where something's banned but wanted, someone will smuggle it. Troopers say they just broke up one of the biggest such operations running into Bethel.

Three Bethel residents were arrested this week, capping a months-long investigation into what investigators describe as a large-scale bootlegging pipeline funneling thousands of pounds of alcohol into the region on a regular basis. In "local option" communities like Bethel that ban or restrict alcohol, that kind of importation isn't just unlicensed sales — it's a black-market trade in a controlled substance, and a lucrative one.

The arrests turned tense. Joshua Cooper, 32, pulled a firearm while trying to flee outside his Bethel home Sunday, troopers say, and fought arrest. Inside, investigators reported finding alcohol, cash, guns, and bags of psilocybin mushrooms; Cooper now faces 13 charges, including assault on officers, weapons and drug offenses, and illegal alcohol sales. A shipment of roughly 275 drinks bound for the region was intercepted after he was taken in. A 28-year-old associate was arrested the same day. The third, Richard Massenburg, 45, was picked up a day later at the Anchorage airport, where troopers seized cash, a vehicle, and 83 bottles of liquor from an inbound shipment linked to him.

That airport catch points to a bigger pattern: Anchorage's airport has become the chokepoint for illicit goods moving into rural Alaska. State officials reported that 82 percent of all cocaine, fentanyl, heroin, and meth seized in 2025 passed through Anchorage — the hub through which nearly everything, legal and not, flows to the Bush.

All three are presumed innocent.