Feds gauge Columbus fentanyl stash’s impact
The largest stash of fentanyl ever seized in Columbus was discovered earlier this summer inside a small green house on the city’s East Side.
A team of federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents, accompanied by local law-enforcement officers, found 22 pounds of fentanyl during a June 22 search of the 960-square-foot residence on South Napoleon Avenue, federal court records show. It was the biggest recorded fentanyl seizure yet in Columbus, said Mauricio Jimenez, the agent in charge of the DEA’s Columbus office since February.
Four men — all undocumented immigrants from Mexico — are being held on federal charges of conspiracy to distribute fentanyl along with heroin and methamphetamine, which also were recovered from the house, Jimenez said.
The four people charged with seven counts each are Tomas Palma (also known as Tomas Sandoval), 31; Alvaro Gasca-Cardoso, 37; Alexis Zazueta-Soto, 44; and Salatiel Ramos-Rojas, 40.
Ramos-Rojas was the person renting the one-story house in the 400 block of South Napoleon Avenue, federal court documents show.
Federal agents are still investigating how the drugs were transported to Columbus, but they are certain they were part of a trafficking operation that stretches far beyond Ohio, Jimenez said. The counts involving heroin trafficking say the drug was distributed in the Columbus area from about May 1 through June 22, court records show.
Fentanyl is a man-made painkilling drug that can be 50 times more potent than heroin, depending on its purity. Exposure to a very small amount of fentanyl — the granular size of a needle head — can be deadly, Jimenez said.
Much of the fentanyl found in the United States is made in China and shipped to Mexico, or made in Mexico and brought over the border, he said.
“The Mexican cartels, they didn’t reinvent the wheel . ... The same trade routes are still being used” that were used for the heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana that came before, Jimenez said.
In a recent case in New Carlisle in Clark County, law enforcement learned that a man was paid $6,000 to drive a van containing what was thought to be 20 pounds of fentanyl from Nuevo Leon, Mexico, to the Dayton area on June 11, federal court records show. Laboratory testing later determined the suspected fentanyl was actually cocaine; federal charges are pending against four men in U.S. District Court in Dayton.
Part of the ongoing investigation of the fentanyl seizure in Columbus will determine if any casualties can be connected to drug sales, Jimenez said.
“We’re always looking to find these people who have been hurt,” he said. “That’s just not specific to this investigation.”
Fentanyl, which is frequently being mixed with heroin, is considered to be at the root of the spike in overdose deaths in Ohio and nationwide. It has contributed mightily to Ohio’s total of 5,137 drug-overdose deaths in 2017, which was a 17.6 percent increase over the prior year.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently announced Operation Synthetic Opioid Surge, a program designed to provide more resources to cut the supply of deadly synthetic opioids in locations where overdose rates are high. The Southern District of Ohio, which includes Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton, was identified as one of the 10 hardest-hit areas for opioid abuse in the nation.
The greatest attention will be given to Montgomery County and the Dayton metro areas, U.S. Attorney Benjamin C. Glassman said.
Montgomery County had a record 566 overdose deaths in 2017.
By comparison, Franklin County, which has a higher population, set its own record of 520 overdose deaths last year, with 66.5 percent of them fentanyl-related, according to the Franklin County coroner’s office. In 2016, Franklin County had 353 overdose deaths.