18-year sentence for dealer of deadly drugs
Columbia County resident Jacob Ebel had admitted selling heroin and fentanyl to two people who later died.
A Columbia County drug dealer described by prosecutors as a “merchant of death” was sentenced Wednesday to 18 years in federal prison, federal prosecutors said.
Jacob Ebel, 32, of Niverville, was sentenced as part of a deal in which he pleaded guilty on Sept. 11, 2019, to drug conspiracy and possession charges, admitting he sold heroin, fentanyl and other controlled substances to two Columbia County residents who died in 2016.
Ebel was sentenced in federal court in Albany by U.S. District Judge Mae A. D’Agostino. After his prison term, he will be under three years of post-release supervision. D’Agostino told Ebel, “You are forever intertwined with the senseless, tragic deaths of two people who were loved by their families,” according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York.
Prosecutors said Ebel sold heroin and fentanyl to a man identified as S.B., who overdosed on July 3, 2016, and died five days later, and then to a woman identified as S.S., who overdosed and died on July 23, 2016. U.S. Attorney Grant C. Jaquith said last September that Ebel was “a merchant of death whose heroin and fentanyl killed two people in less than three weeks.”
Ebel was arrested July 26, 2016, and charged with possessing heroin and fentanyl with the intent to distribute, and conspiring to possess and distribute heroin and fentanyl, authorities said at the time.
A search of Ebel’s house yielded about 16 grams of heroin and fentanyl that Ebel intended to sell, prosecutors said, and he has been in custody ever since.
If Ebel had stood trial and been convicted of the initial charges, he could been sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.