Fentanyl dealer receives five-year sentence

Drug pusher plied trade from hotel

On Sept. 15, 2014, Windsor police raided Room 604 at the Waterfront Hotel on Riverside Drive. Inside, they found John Yousif Yakoop plying his trade.

They had received a tip that Yakoop was dealing drugs from the hotel room. There they found Yakoop with a pillowcase containing fentanyl patches, cocaine and oxycodone pills.

Yakoop, 38, pleaded guilty in Superior Court to possessing drugs for the purpose of trafficking and was sentenced Tuesday to five years in a federal penitentiary. With 33 months of time already deemed served, his sentence was reduced to 27 months.

Yakoop has his own drug addiction, court heard. The Windsor man sold drugs to support his habit.

“This was clearly fuelled by addiction,” defence lawyer Laura Joy said.

Since this was Yakoop’s third drug conviction, a penitentiary term is necessary, said federal drug prosecutor Jeff Nanson.

“One of the largest issues here is it is fentanyl and fentanyl is becoming an issue in Windsor.”

Yakoop was caught with 72 fentanyl patches each containing 100 micrograms of the powerful painkiller. In the same pillowcase, officers found 17.9 grams of cocaine and 75 oxycodone tablets, each pill containing 80 milligrams. Officers also found $6,000 in Canadian currency, wrapped in elastic bands, and another $550 in Yakoop’s wallet.

The room Yakoop was in had been booked under the name of Rebecca Michelle Escobar of Windsor. Escobar, 22, was charged as well, but the charges against her were dropped Tuesday as part of a plea deal that saw Yakoop take responsibility for everything found in the hotel room.

Superior Court Justice Steven Rogin handed Yakoop a lifetime weapons prohibition. Rogin said he would have ordered Yakoop to submit a blood sample for the national DNA databank police use to solve crime, but Yakoop has complied with that order on a previous conviction.

Rogin, noting that Yakoop has been receiving methadone while behind bars, made a recommendation that Yakoop continue that treatment in the federal penitentiary system.

Windsor is in the throes of an opioid epidemic. According to 2015 statistics, the latest available from public health officials, Windsor surpasses the provincial average of opioid-related deaths by 11 per cent.

The Windsor-Chatham-Sarnia region has the highest proportion of people taking prescription opioids in the province, according to a report released in May.

Police say many of those prescription drugs — oxycodone, fentanyl and others — end up on the streets where they are sold to addicts.