Three males appeared in federal courtroom in Boston in separate fentanyl-distribution circumstances originating from northern Massachusetts this week, additional underscoring the area’s identified standing as a significant opioid pipeline that’s leaving extra Massachusetts residents lifeless than ever earlier than.
Opioid-related deaths elevated by 5% in 2020 over the earlier 12 months, in accordance with state information launched by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. That means 2,104 individuals died from opioid causes in that 12 months alone, which, at two extra deaths than in 2016, set a brand new state document.
“Today, Lawrence and Lowell are centers of the opioid trade for the region, and fentanyl has featured prominently in that trade,” the coverage analysis heart Boston Indicators wrote in a report, including that New England drug trafficking organizations — and centering in northern Massachusetts just like the Merrimack Valley space 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,” in accordance with the feds, pleaded responsible to being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition in furtherance of his position in a significant drug trafficking group allegedly headed by a Crips gang member.
The group had high-volume capsule presses able to flooding the drug pipeline with 15,000 counterfeit Percocet capsules per hour at $10 to $20 a pop, producing thousands and thousands for the gang, the feds say.
The similar day and in the identical Seaport District federal courthouse, Hector “El Jefe” Minaya Melo, 35, of Lawrence, was sentenced to 4 and a half years in jail by Judge Richard G. Stearns for 2 counts of distribution of 40 grams or extra of fentanyl and one rely of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 40 grams or extra of fentanyl.
While these males had been in courtroom, cops had been arresting Lawrence man Rafael Sierra-Baez, 42, on whom the feds have pinned 5 counts of distribution and possession with intent to distribute fentanyl. He made an preliminary look in courtroom the identical day and is being held pending a detention listening to scheduled for Wednesday.
On the state degree, Attorney General Maura Healey’s workplace was awarded a $3.8 million federal grant in November to increase regional drug enforcement work by way of the New England Fentanyl Strike Force. That got here a month after the pressure took down a significant Lawrence fentanyl-trafficking operation.
That job pressure has since seen arrests in a number of northern Massachusetts fentanyl trafficking operations, together with simply final month, on April 22, when it arrested 12 people allegedly related to a Lawrence operation the place 4 and a half kilos of suspected fentanyl was allegedly seized, in addition to a number of weapons.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”