Three men from Mexico entered guilty pleas today in Los Angeles for their involvement in a plot to widely distribute more than a million deadly fentanyl pills, federal officials said. The trio of Sinaloa natives, nabbed last year in El Monte, copped to one federal count each of conspiring to distribute the synthetic opioid.
Per a U.S. Justice Department release, the defendants identified as Florencio Camacho Allan, 29, Gerardo Gaxiola Patiño, 30, and Alex Valdez Oroz, 26, admitted to planning to, between September 2022 to March 2023, knowingly distribute fentanyl. On March 7, 2023, following negotiations to sell a "sample box" of roughly 10,000 fentanyl pills at 75 cents apiece, the three men met with a buyer at a Denny's in El Segundo to facilitate the precursor deal for a much larger shipment to follow.
The undercover operation sprang to life after Denny's rendezvous, where Allan and Patiño engaged inside with the would-be buyer, discussing the forthcoming sale of approximately 2 million additional fentanyl pills. Post-meeting, the buyer and their associate stepped to the white car parked outside, and Patiño pulled from it a black bag containing some 10,082 fentanyl pills, weighing roughly 1.1 kilograms, and exchanged it for $7,500, prosecutors detailed. Allan then confirmed possession of the more significant stash via WhatsApp, setting the stage for the trap to close in.
Later that day in a Holiday Inn parking lot, designated as the handover point for the 1-million-pill transaction, law enforcement swooped in, detaining Oroz and Allan outside, and Patiño within the confines of the hotel's bathroom. A search of their vehicle yielded at least three duffle bags packed with the narcotics, the sum of their content tallying around 1,016,270 fentanyl pills, officials went on to say.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, in cooperation with several local and national agencies, investigated the case through the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program. The sentencings are on the books for August 13, with each man potentially facing a mandatory minimum of 10 years to life in federal prison. Assistant U.S. Attorney K. Afia Bondero of the Major Frauds Section is prosecuting the case, the announcement from Public Information Officer Ciaran McEvoy indicated.
