A former Mexican police officer illegally present in the United States was charged in federal court in Texas for attempting to traffic enough fentanyl into the United States to kill more than 10 million people, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas announced Friday afternoon.
A federal grand jury on Thursday night indicted 30-year-old Assmir Contreras-Martinez on conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute fentanyl after the Tucson, Arizona resident was found with approximately 33 kilograms of the deadly narcotic.
Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin.
“Fentanyl is the number one threat causing our opioid epidemic in the United States,” Clyde E. Shelley, Jr., DEA special agent in charge of the Dallas Field Division, said in a statement. “This seizure alone has potentially save millions of lives.”
The massive seizure took place in May when a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper pulled Contreras-Martinez over while he was driving east on I-40 by Amarillo, Texas.
The officer searched the man’s Ford Explorer and found nearly three dozen kilograms of a white powdery substance that the law enforcement official believed at the time was cocaine. The substance was seized and later tested positive for fentanyl.
Contreras-Martinez said he was compensated with $6,000 in exchange for transporting the car filled with drugs from California to Florida. He admitted to having illegally crossed into the U.S. from Mexico in October 2018 and that prior to that, he had been a municipal police officer in Cananea, Sonora, Mexico, for eight years.
Contreras-Martinez will face a punishment of 30 years in federal prison and deportation following his sentence, if convicted.
Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, Anna Marie Bell, is prosecuting the case.
