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Timothy Alan Blank, 54, of Reseda, CA, made it 2,800 miles before Fort Lee police pulled his SUV over in Englewood Cliffs north of Sylvan and Myrtle avenues last Friday, March 8, according to a federal complaint.
A Bergen County Sheriff's K-9 directed officers to the trunk, where it says they found the five kilos wrapped in five bricks.
Blank collected the wrapped $195,000 of heroin and fentanyl near Los Angeles International Airport earlier that week, the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Newark by agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Newark says.
He'd been paid $8,000 for the job, the complaint says.
A female passenger with him was also taken into custody and turned over to federal authorities along with Blank, the complant says.
“Timothy Alan Blank was caught with a large quantity of deadly fentanyl,” said HSI Newark Acting Special Agent-in-Charge Michael Alfonso. “That amount of fentanyl could have placed millions of people at risk."
A federal magistrate judge ordered Blank held following a hearing in Newark this past Monday, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said.
He's charged with knowingly and intentionally possessing a quantity of a mixture and substance containing a detectable amount of fentanyl with the intent to distribute it, the U.S. attorney said.
Sellinger thanked Fort Lee police, the Bergen County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations for assisting HSI Newark with the case.
Handling the prosecution for the government is Assistant U.S. Attorney Vincent D. Romano of his Narcotics/Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) Unit in Newark.
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