Judge hands down 7½-year sentence to man who sold thousands of fentanyl pills in Pleasant Hill and San Ramon

A man who was reportedly caught red-handed selling 1,500 counterfeit opiate pills that contained fentanyl has been sentenced to 71/2 years in federal prison, court records show.

Concord resident Santiago Benito MercadoAguayo met with an undercover Drug Enforcement Agent three times last year to sell him 500 fentanyllaced pills at each meeting, prosecutors said. The meetings took place around Contra Costa, including a shopping center in Pleasant Hill and the In-N-Out parking lot in San Ramon. In the last deal before his arrest, last October, MercadoAguayo also sold the agent 2 pounds of methamphetamine.

Mercado-Aguayo was sentenced last week by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer after pleading guilty to a federal drug trafficking offense.

The case against Mercado-Aguayo came as the DEA investigated a “poly drug trafficking organization” that included the use of an undercover agent. Other agents surveilled the three planned buys and recorded the agent’s text messages arranging the deal, court records show.

When he needed to resupply, Mercado-Aguayo drove from his home in Concord to a source in Los Angeles, prosecutors said, adding that he made these trips “repeatedly” in order to “replenish his supply of these pills by the thousands.”

Mercado-Aguayo’s attorney asked for the minimum, a five-year prison term, arguing that such leniency was warranted because it was Mercado-Aguayo’s first conviction and he faces another punishment — deportation to Mexico — after his release from prison. The defense also described Mercado-Aguayo as a middleman, not the head of a drug ring, writing in court records that he “had no ability to dictate the price, substance, or quantities involved in the sale.”