Overview
- Johnson was sentenced to 60 months in federal prison on Thursday and was also ordered to three years of supervised release and a $30,000 fine.
- A federal jury convicted Johnson in August 2025 on six felony counts of possessing dogs for use in an animal fighting venture, and acquitted him on 17 other counts.
- Authorities seized 190 dogs during the 2024 investigation, which the Justice Department said was the largest number taken from a single person in a federal dogfighting case.
- Prosecutors say Johnson ran a commercial operation that bred and sold so-called champion fighting dogs, charged stud fees and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from those sales.
- The Department of Justice credited a multi-agency investigation by ENRD, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the FBI and U.S. Marshals, and cited Johnson’s 2004 state animal-fighting conviction in describing him as a repeat offender.