State’s fentanyl problem highlighted by federal arrests
Three men appeared in federal court in Boston in separate fentanyl-distribution cases originating from northern Massachusetts this week, further underscoring the region’s known status as a major opioid pipeline that is leaving more Massachusetts residents dead than ever before.
Opioid-related deaths increased by 5% in 2020 over the previous year, according to state data released by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
That means 2,104 people died from opioid causes in that year alone, which, at two more deaths than in 2016, set a new state record.
“Today, Lawrence and Lowell are centers of the opioid trade for the region, and fentanyl has featured prominently in that trade,” the policy research center Boston Indicators wrote in a report, adding that New England drug trafficking organizations — and centering in northern Massachusetts like the Merrimack Valley area and the North Shore — “are particularly active and well-established.”
Ernest Johnson, 34, of Salem, who variously goes by “Yo Pesci” or “Mr. Live Mr. Drive,” according to the feds, pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition in furtherance of his role in a major drug trafficking organization allegedly headed by a Crips gang member.
The group had high-volume pill presses capable of flooding the drug pipeline with 15,000 counterfeit Percocet pills per hour at $10 to $20 a pop, generating millions for the gang, the feds say.
The same day and in the same Seaport District federal courthouse, Hector “El Jefe” Minaya Melo, 35, of Lawrence, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison by Judge Richard G. Stearns for two counts of distribution of 40 grams or more of fentanyl and one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 40 grams or more of fentanyl.
While those men were in court, cops were arresting Lawrence man Rafael Sierra-Baez, 42, on whom the feds have pinned five counts of distribution and possession with intent to distribute fentanyl.
He made an initial appearance in court the same day and is being held pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
On the state level, Attorney General Maura Healey’s office was awarded a $3.8 million federal grant in November to expand regional drug enforcement work through the New England Fentanyl Strike Force. That came a month after the force took down a major Lawrence fentanyl-trafficking operation.
That task force has since seen arrests in several northern Massachusetts fentanyl trafficking operations, including just last month, on April 22, when it arrested 12 individuals allegedly connected to a Lawrence operation where 4 and a half kilos of suspected fentanyl was allegedly seized, as well as several guns.