Federal prosecutors announced Monday that a California man was sentenced to 121 months in prison for possessing and attempting to distribute more than 400 grams of fentanyl.
Philip A. Talbert, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California, said Alden Nunez-Rosales, 27, of Fresno, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to drug charges in February, but the charges have not been filed. It was the same month. announced in a statement.
According to Talbert’s statement, Nuñez Rosales delivered 5,000 fentanyl pills to a government informant posing as a customer last April, and then delivered another 45,000 fentanyl pills from his stockpile to his home. He intended to distribute it to law enforcement officers who were chasing him. Minutes later, he reportedly evaded a road stop, crashed into a tree and fled on foot. Officers arrested him and “seized over 12 kilograms of fentanyl pills, firearms, ammunition, scales and over $3,500 in cash” from his home, according to the statement. (Related: 4 foreign nationals charged with trafficking enough fentanyl into the US to kill 1.6 million people)
Images of actual genuine and counterfeit Rainbow Fentanyl M30 pills. (Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
In a statement, Nunez-Rosales’ case was linked to the Synthetic Opioid System, which the Justice Department created in 2018 to stop the flow of deadly synthetic opioids into dangerous areas and identify domestic and international distribution networks. It was part of Operation Surge (SOS). .
In a separate ruling Monday in Arizona, 27-year-old Mexican Kayvin Croswell Cervantes pleaded guilty to delivering “approximately 400,000 blue fentanyl pills and approximately 20,000 multicolored fentanyl pills.” He was sentenced to 17 years in prison as the last member of the head government. He reportedly provided an undercover agent in September 2022 with “pills (“Skittles”) and approximately 25 pounds of methamphetamine.” press release From the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona.
According to a press release, Croswell-Cervantes and his co-conspirators are members of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), which was created to identify, disrupt, and dismantle top drug traffickers and their transnational cartels. The charges were filed as part of an investigation by
