Drug deal for 1 million fentanyl pills in LA County leads to prison sentences for 2 men
A judge sentenced two men to prison time after they were found with 1 million fentanyl pills last year, a massive drug bust in Los Angeles County which federal prosecutors say started with a deal brokered in Mexico.
For several months, between September 2022 and March 2023, the two defendants and another suspect all worked together to distribute thousands of fentanyl pills which they were selling for 75 cents each, according to federal prosecutors. They were ultimately found with 1,016,270 fentanyl pills — which weighed about 241 pounds — which they had planned to sell.
Fentanyl is described by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency as 100 times more potent than morphine, 50 times more potent than heroin and the main driver behind a record-high number of drug-related deaths of Americans in recent years. In Southern California, like much of the U.S., more and more county-level prosecutors are pursuing murder charges against accused dealers tied to fentanyl deaths.
"Fentanyl is the nation's greatest and most urgent drug threat," states the DEA's 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. sentenced Florencio Camacho Allan, 29, and Gerardo Gaxiola Patiño, 30, each to 10 years in federal prison for a drug deal they made last year. While the pills were sold in LA County, the deal was coordinated beforehand by a drug broker in Mexico, prosecutors said, and Allan and Patiño are both Mexican nationals.
The men — along with a third accomplice named Alex Valdez Oroz — all pleaded guilty to one count of one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute fentanyl on April 2. However, 26-year-old Oroz will be sentenced on Sept. 10.
On March 7, 2023, the broker in Mexico coordinated a meeting at an El Segundo Denny's restaurant between Allan and a buyer for a so-called "sample" sale of 10,000 fentanyl pills, prosecutors said. There was a deal made for Allan and his accomplices to eventually sell 2 million pills to the buyer, but first they would only sell this smaller amount — all at a rate of 75 cents per pill.
Allan, along with Patiño and Oroz, arrived that day to the Denny's in a white car.
Inside the restaurant, Allan and Patiño met the buyer and the buyer's associate while Oroz waited in the car. They discussed their plans for the larger drug sale, with plans to sell 1 million fentanyl pills to the buyer later that day and another 1 million the next day.
After meeting inside the restaurant, the four of them went outside to the white car where Patiño was waiting. Patiño pulled out a black bag containing about 10,082 fentanyl pills and handed it to the buyer in exchange for $7,500. Then he, Oroz and Allan drove away.
The bag of pills weighed about 2.5 pounds, prosecutors said.
Over a Whatsapp video call, Allan spoke to the buyer later that same day and confirmed he had the larger set of pills, showing the pills which appeared to be in the trunk of the car. Then, they all agreed to a 1-million-fentanyl-pill deal in a Holiday Inn parking lot.
Later that same day, law enforcement officials found and detained Allan and Oroz in the hotel's parking lot. They discovered Patiño inside the bathroom of the hotel's lobby and detained him as well.
The investigators found at least three duffle bags that were filled with bundles of fentanyl pills, all inside the car's trunk and back seat. In total, there were 1,016,270 fentanyl pills found — all of which the men had planned to sell that day.
The pills weighed roughly 109.3 kilograms, or 241 pounds, according to federal prosecutors.
The case was investigated by the DEA as part of its High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Local agencies including the Hawthorne Police Department, the El Monte Police Department and the Fullerton Police Department also took part in the investigation while the state's National Guard assisted.