Yesterday, 25-year-old Justin Westmoreland from Saugus was sentenced to 57 months in prison and three years of supervised release for his involvement in the alarming case that exposed the vulnerability surrounding public health and safety according to Department of Justice.
Westmoreland was one of the 23 individuals charged in October 2022 for their connection to a drug trafficking organization (DTO) operating in the North Shore. The DTO has been accused of manufacturing and distributing tens of thousands of counterfeit prescription pills containing fentanyl and methamphetamine.
Westmoreland himself was found responsible for the distribution of approximately 7,000 counterfeit oxycodone pills filled with undisclosed amounts of fentanyl according to Department of Justice.
The case has garnered attention, not just for the scale of the operation, but also due to the intercepted communications that revealed Westmoreland was aware that the pills he distributed were counterfeit.
