The Case is Part of New Federal Cases Targeting Fentanyl Dealers Recently Announced by Federal Drug Enforcement Officials.
By Zach Armstrong
Adrian Benevides-Schorgi, a 22-year-old resident of Los Angeles’ Jefferson Park neighborhood, was charged with selling counterfeit pills containing fentanyl that resulted in life-threatening overdoses of three teenage Santa Monica girls.
Last May, the girls were found unconscious by Santa Monica Police and Firefighters in an apartment on the 2000 block of 20th Street overdosed. They were treated by paramedics and rushed to the hospital with critical injuries. They snorted crushed tablets they thought was ecstasy that was ordered from an online dealer, according to officials.
Benevides-Schorgi was ordered to be held without bond. His trial is set for June 20 in Federal Court, Central District of California.
The case is part of new federal cases targeting fentanyl dealers recently announced by federal drug enforcement officials. A dozen defendants are involved in the case. The Santa Monica case is the only one where fentanyl overdoses didn’t directly result in the death of at least one victim. The 12 cases, part of a project launched in 2018, are part of collaborative efforts by the DEA-led Overdose Justice Task Force and local law enforcement agencies, such as the Santa Monica Police Department.
“The two main drivers that are causing fentanyl related deaths in our community and throughout the nation are accessibility and deception,” DEA Los Angeles Special Agent in Charge Bill Bodner said in a release. “Social media platforms have made fentanyl widely available to anyone with a smartphone and made every neighborhood an open-air drug market. The deceptive marketing tactics used by the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels have created a vast pool of victims who unknowingly ingested fentanyl and did not make a choice to be harmed or die.
Officials link the increase of fentanyl deaths to deceptive marketing of the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels which sell drugs on the internet. The cartel groups have a large sum of victims that did not realize they were ingesting the deadly substance.
