Fentanyl kingpin gets 22 years

The crackdown on fentanyl trafficking by the US Attorney’s office in Boston notched a 22-year sentence in one case this week and charges against a New York City man for operating a scheme that flooded Greater Boston with multiple kilos of the “deadly poison,” in another.

First up is Jasdrual “Josh” Perez, 36, of Cranston, R.I., who during the investigation into his case talked on a recorded phone call about how successful his business of pumping fentanyl powder pressed into pills that federal prosecutors say were “designed to look like pharmaceutical grade Oxycodone or Percocet” and sold throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and other states.

“I have big bills, so when I collect,” he told an unidentified man over the phone. “For example, I may not receive payments for a whole month or a month and a half and it’s okay because I have resources. When I collect that, it’s like a million and some.”

But he also had fears: “Dude, I sell drugs because I like this (stuff), dude. I’m not like I was before, because I don’t wanna ended in jail, you understand me, dude?”

His fears came to fruition on Tuesday when U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin sentenced Perez to 22 and a half years in federal prison for operating his drug trafficking organization based in Providence, Rhode Island. Federal prosecutors says he distributed the drug pressed into pills that were “designed to look like pharmaceutical grade Oxycodone or Percocet.”

U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy said that Perez, “pumped over 200 kilograms of this deadly poison onto the streets of Massachusetts and neighboring states, wreaking havoc and destroying lives.”

“This was not some low-level street dealer. This is a man who bought industrial pill presses to churn out millions of pills containing highly addictive and dangerous fentanyl,” Levy continued.

Perez will also have to pay a fine of $1 million and forfeit his Rhode Island home that was the base of his multi-state operation.

Federal agents on Feb. 7, 2022, searched a home owned by Perez and seized two industrial-sized pill presses and kilograms of fentanyl — some in powder form and housed in what appear to be industrial garbage bags according to photos in court documents. Also among the drug haul seized by police, 50,000 pills already pressed in the make-shift drug factory. Perez fled the scene but was arrested four days later.

New Yorker

Levy’s office says that Cesar Nunez Lopez, 42, drove up to the Boston area from his home in New York City to distribute “multiple kilograms of fentanyl” out of grocery store parking lots last month and earlier this month.

On Nov. 15 , the feds say he “distributed 99.4 grams of fentanyl wrapped in a clear plastic bag inside a black sock” from a Market Basket parking lot in an unidentified metro-area town and then came back 10 days later to distribute 500 grams of the drug at a store parking lot in Watertown.

Prosecutors say that Lopez was back at it again Friday morning, again in Watertown, when he alleged distributed 2.5 kilos of the stuff out of a shopping bag.

A law enforcement affidavit states that Lopez charged $32,000 for a kilogram of fentanyl and $16,000 for 500 grams, according to alleged text messages with a cooperating witness the feds say he dealt to.

The charge of distribution and possession with intent to distribute controlled substances provides for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, at least three years and up to life of supervised release and a fine of up to $1 million, according to Levy’s office.

‘Deadly poison’

Drug overdoses took the lives of roughly 100,000 people each year for the last several years, with opioids being the leading cause of overdoses, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control. Last year, 107,543 deaths were attributed to overdoses, with the lion’s share being opioid overdoses at 81,083 deaths last year.

The U.S. saw a decrease in the number of overdose deaths last year for the first time since 2018, according to the CDC.

The Drug Enforcement Administration says that fentanyl is “approximately 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin.”