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Charged with conspiracy and possessing 6½ pounds of the drug with the intent to distribute it are Bronx residents Edomar Troncoso, 28, Hanser Hernandez-Soto, 25, and Jefri Dominguez, 35, Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella said.
Members of his Narcotic Task Force, along with Teaneck police, took the trio into custody late last week, Musella said.
All three were booked into the Bergen County Jail and released the next day, with conditions, following first appearances in Central Judicial Processing Court in Hackensack.
All were described as self-employed without further explanation of their line of work.
Produced in labs, fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid that is similar to morphine but is 50 to 100 times more potent.
Like morphine, it's ordinarily used to treat patients with severe pain, particularly after surgery. It's also among the most common drugs involved in drug overdoses, the National Institute on Drug Abuse says.
Fentanyl is usually sold as powder, dropped onto blotter paper, put in eye droppers or nasal sprays, or made into pills that look like other prescription drugs.
Dealers also mix it with heroin, cocaine, meth and Ecstasy because it takes very little to produce a high -- while also putting the user who isn't aware of its presence at risk of overdosing and dying.
According to the DEA, it takes only a single two-milligram dose of fentanyl to kill a person.
A pound of fentanyl can produce 226,796 two-milligram doses. Multiplying that by 6½ gives you 1,474,174 million potentially fatal doses.
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