Updated on: September 1, 2022 / 7:01 AM / CBS San Francisco

MONTEREY -- A  former employee of a Mexican pharmacy who smuggled 100s of counterfeit fentanyl-laced pills into Monterey County, leading to at least one death has been sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison.

Francisco Javier Schraidt Rodriguez, 63, had pleaded guilty to distribution and conspiracy to distribute fentanyl and alprazolam in April.

At the time of  Rodriguez's 2020 indictment, then U.S. Attorney David L. Anderson raised the alarm about the pipeline of deadly fentanyl pouring into Monterey County.

"Fake Oxycodone pills are flooding Monterey County," said U.S. Attorney Anderson.  "These fake pills are laced with fentanyl.  The drug dealers who are pushing these fake pills couldn't control the amount of fentanyl in them even if they cared.  Fentanyl is dosed in micrograms.  Dealers don't have the equipment or the ability to control what they are selling.  Our young people are dying by the score from ignorance and indifference."

Rodriguez, a pharmacist in Mexico, smuggled bottles of alprazolam and counterfeit, fentanyl-laced pills across the border from Mexico to California.  Once he was in the United States, Schraidt Rodriguez shipped these bottles and pills in 100-pill increments to a drug dealer in Monterey County.   

Prosecutors said he often "fronted" the drugs to be paid after they were sold in California. The indictment alleges that, during Rodriguez's drug distribution scheme, approximately $81,859 worth of counterfeit, fentanyl-laced M30 pills; bottles of alprazolam; and other narcotics were sold in Monterey County. 

 In 2019, a man who purchased M30s from the co-conspirator ingested some portion of one or more of the pills, overdosed and died, leaving a spouse and a young son behind.

He was taken into custody at sentencing and has begun serving his time.  

First published on September 1, 2022 / 7:01 AM

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