A 49-year-old Desert Hot Springs man who sold fentanyl and cocaine that he packaged and sent to the Northeastern U.S. was sentenced Thursday to 13 years in federal prison.
Victor “Calami” Rodriguez Gomez pleaded guilty in December to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 400 grams of fentanyl and five kilograms of coke under a plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
During a hearing Thursday at U.S. District Court in Hartford, Connecticut, Judge Michael Shea imposed the sentence determined justified by the plea bargain. In addition to the term of imprisonment, Shea ordered Gomez to serve five years on supervised release, or parole.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, U.S. Postal Service inspectors became aware of the defendant’s trafficking operation in 2022 after identifying suspicious packages arriving in New Britain, Connecticut, from the USPS’ Inland Empire mail processing center in San Bernardino.
“A court-authorized search of one package … revealed approximately one kilogram of fentanyl,” according to an agency statement.
A surveillance was established that later determined the packages from California were going to a Willow Street residence used by Ramon Ramos Acevedo, described by federal prosecutors as “an associate of Gomez.”
“Investigators also developed evidence that Gomez had an associate who used a van to transport narcotics from California, or another location in the southwestern United States, to addresses in Connecticut associated with Acevedo,” the government said. “On Aug. 25, 2022, investigators observed Acevedo unloading items from the van in New Britain.”
A sting was set up that led to a traffic stop in early September 2022, during which Acevedo was pulled over and his vehicle searched by police, who seized “$179,578 in cash and nine cell phones,” prosecutors said.
A third man, Martin Cooper, was identified as a courier for Gomez and was stopped while driving a van through Iowa in November 2022, netting “approximately 22 kilograms of cocaine and two kilograms of fentanyl, which was destined for Acevedo in New Britain,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Both Acevedo and Cooper later pleaded guilty to federal narcotics charges and are awaiting sentencing, prosecutors said.
Fentanyl is manufactured in overseas labs, principally in China, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which says the synthetic opioid is smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border by cartels.
The drug is 80-100 times more potent than morphine and can be mixed into any number of street narcotics and prescription drugs, without a user knowing what he or she is consuming. Ingestion of only two milligrams can be fatal.
Fentanyl is the leading cause of death for Americans between 18 and 45 years old.