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What Felix Acevedo, 29, didn’t know was that law enforcement officers had intercepted it.
They removed the deadly synthetic opioid -- which authorities say is 50 times more potent than heroin and up to 100 times more powerful than morphine – and replaced it with a harmless substitute for what became a “controlled delivery.”
Convicts technically can be sent to federal prison for life under the government’s sentencing guidelines – unless they cooperate with authorities looking to prosecute others for their roles in moving sizable amounts of drugs.
Acevedo, who played what was considered a minor role in the operation, will have to serve just about all of the more than two years he ended up getting through a plea bargain with federal prosecutors.
During a proceeding in Newark, U.S. District Judge Katharine S. Hayden also sentenced him to three years of supervised release for his plea to conspiring to distribute fentanyl.
Acevedo was working with others when he collected the package on Feb. 20, 2019 in Clifton, Acting U.S. Attorney Rachael A. Honig said.
Before then, “law enforcement had interdicted the parcel prior to its delivery and removed the 997 grams of fentanyl” that was inside, she said.
Developed for pain management treatment of cancer patients, fentanyl is often mixed in with heroin by dealers without the users' knowledge. According to the DEA, two milligrams of fentanyl is considered a lethal dose.
(There are 453,592 milligrams in a pound.)
Honig credited special agents of the FBI and inspectors with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service with the investigation leading to the plea and sentence, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Francesca Liquori of the U.S. Attorney’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force/Narcotics Unit in Newark.
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