Local law enforcement agencies marked National Fentanyl Awareness Day by announcing multiple arrests for fentanyl-overdose related crimes, including a suspect responsible for the triple overdose of a group of Santa Monica teens last year.
Officials announced the arrest of 22-year-old Los Angeles resident Adrian Benavides-Schorgi on May 9 in connection with a 2022 incident.
The three female students, who were all enrolled in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, were transported to the hospital from a Santa Monica apartment on May 24 of last year after experiencing a fentanyl overdose. The following morning two of the girls were in critical but stable condition, while the third was conscious and alert.
Benavides-Schorgi, 22, of the Jefferson Park neighborhood is accused of selling counterfeit pills containing fentanyl that led to the girl’s life-threatening overdoses who thought they were buying ecstasy. Benavides-Schorgi was charged by a federal grand jury with one count of distribution of fentanyl resulting in serious bodily injury for the alleged narcotics sale. He was arrested on April 27, and he was ordered held without bond at a hearing the following day. A trial is scheduled for June 20.
Santa Monica Police Chief Ramon Batista joined law enforcement representatives from six counties who coordinated with the Drug Enforcement Administration on a series of arrests around the region related to fentanyl crimes.
Of the 12 cases highlighted, the Santa Monica incident was the only one not resulting in death. Most other suspects are all being charged with distribution and/or possession of fentanyl resulting in death but one is alleged to have operated a large fentanyl sale network online.
Rajiv Srinivasan, 37, of Houston, has agreed to plead guilty to distribution resulting in a fentanyl overdose death and conspiracy to distribute and possess with the intent to distribute controlled substances, acknowledging that his drug trafficking activities caused at least three deaths.
Srinivasan admitted in the plea agreement that over approximately nine months in 2022, he and his co-defendant "engaged in at least 3,800 drug transactions with approximately 1,500 customers across the country, selling at least 123,688 pills resembling M30 pills which in fact contained fentanyl," in addition to approximately 20 pounds of methamphetamine and lesser quantities of fentanyl powder, black tar heroin, and cocaine.
"Drug traffickers operating on the darknet use encrypted communications and decentralized currency in an attempt to conceal their illicit trade, but the joint efforts announced today are evidence that their perceived anonymity is a myth," said Donald Alway, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. "We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to identify drug trafficking on the darknet, including sales of pills pressed with fentanyl, a poisonous ingredient that’s led to an unprecedented number of deaths in the United States each year."
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that, according to the CDC, is up to 50 times as potent as heroin and a major contributor to fatal and non-fatal overdoses across the nation. It is colorless and odorless and can be deadly in quantities as small as a few grains of sand. Many people who overdose on fentanyl unknowingly ingest it laced in pills or powders.
Santa Monica teenager Sammy Berman Chapman died in February 2021 after ingesting a fentanyl-laced pill he purchased from a dealer on Snapchat and mistakenly believed to be Xanax.
Berman’s parents have since become strong advocates for parents who want to stop social media sites from facilitating drug sales.
The couple, prominent TV therapist Dr. Laura Berman and her husband Samuel Chapman, also launched a new awareness campaign yesterday.
"Drug dealers are using social media to target kids and social media companies are doing nothing to stop it," says Mr. Chapman in a video.
The couple are supporting passage of a proposed bill in Sacramento that would hold social media companies accountable for the sale of drugs on their platform.
SB 287 by Berkeley State Senator Nancy Skinner, permits the California Attorney General, District Attorneys, and some city attorneys to hold social media platforms accountable for when they either knowingly or negligently cause children to buy controlled substances, die by suicide, develop eating disorders, or become medically addicted to the platform. It is broadly supported by medical associations, children’s advocacy groups, parents, and kids and is opposed by Big Tech trade group TechNet and the Chamber of Commerce.
While the Chapman’s work was not tied directly to the arrests, law enforcement officials echoed their critiques of online drug sales.
"The two main drivers that are causing fentanyl related deaths in our community and throughout the nation are accessibility and deception," said DEA Los Angeles Special Agent in Charge Bill Bodner. "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. Through the DEA Overdose Justice Task Force we continue to send a strong message to individuals who engage in drug trafficking resulting in death or great bodily injury that selling even one fentanyl pill will have significant consequences in the federal criminal justice system."
The 12 new cases announced this week are a result of the ongoing efforts of the Overdose Justice Task Force, a DEA-led project designed to investigate fatal fentanyl poisonings and identify the individuals who provided the fentanyl that directly caused the deaths. Since the project’s launch in 2018, and including the cases announced today, the United States Attorney’s Office has filed charges against 64 defendants who allegedly sold drugs that resulted in a fatal fentanyl poisoning.
