A Californian was sentenced Monday to 121 months in prison for possessing and intending to distribute over 400 grams of fentanyl, a federal prosecutor announced.
Alden Nunez-Rosales, 27, of Fresno, was sentenced having pled guilty to the drug charges in February — the same month in which he was charged, United States Attorney Phillip A. Talbert of the Eastern District of California announced in a statement.
Nunez-Rosales delivered 5,000 fentanyl pills to a government informant posing as a customer last April intending to distribute 45,000 more fentanyl pills stockpiled in his residence to law enforcement agents who followed him back to his residence, according to Talbert’s statement. Minutes later, he reportedly evaded a traffic stop and crashed into a tree before fleeing on foot. Officers arrested him and “seized over 12 kilograms of fentanyl pills as well as a firearm, ammunition, a scale, and over $3,500 in cash” from his residence, according to the statement. (RELATED: Four Foreign Nationals Charged With Trafficking Enough Fentanyl In US To Kill 1.6 Million People)
Images of actual legitimate and counterfeit Rainbow fentanyl M30 pills. (Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Nunez-Rosales’ case was part of the Operation Synthetic Opioid Surge (S.O.S.), created in 2018 by the Department of Justice to stem the flow of deadly synthetic opioids into at-risk areas and identify local and international distribution networks, according to the statement.
In a separate Monday sentencing in Arizona, 27-year-old Mexican Keivin Crosswell-Cervantes bagged a 17-year prison term as the last member of a triumvirate that pleaded guilty to delivering “approximately 400,000 blue fentanyl pills, approximately 20,000 multi-colored fentanyl pills (“skittles”), and approximately 25 pounds of methamphetamine” to undercover agents Sept. 2022, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Arizona.
Crosswell-Cervantes and his co-conspirators were prosecuted as part of an investigation by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), set up to identify, disrupt, and dismantle apex drug traffickers and their transnational cartels, according to the press release.
