RELATED: Ohio gets more firepower in fentanyl fight
U.S. Postal Inspector Brad Dorman wrote that on Feb. 28, the Montgomery County RANGE task force said that a possible suspect was receiving shipments of narcotics through the mail.
Dorman wrote that a review of postal records showed that the Fer Don Road address had received several packages from Arizona, California and Colorado.
On March 6, the postal inspection service in Providence, R.I. notified officials that they had intercepted two parcels from a suspected dark web vendor, according to the affidavit.
RELATED: 2 men indicted for trafficking enough fentanyl to kill a million people
One was found to contain 101 oxycodone pills and the other Priority Mail Express parcel with a Feb. 28 postmark was to be shipped to Dayton, Dorman wrote.
According to the affidavit, the package was received in a Cincinnati’s post office March 7 but was not able to be canine-searched due to health concerns for the drug dog.
On March 12, a magistrate judge signed off on the search of the package and the tablets tested positive for methoxyacetyl fentanyl, which was classified as a Schedule I drug last year, according to a U.S. Drug Enforcement/U.S. Dept. of Justice website.
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The government web site said methoxyacetyl fentanyl and two other analogues have been identified in drug evidence and associated with fatal overdoses.
“These synthetic opioids have a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision,” the website stated.
This news organization is not naming the suspect because they have not had charges filed against them — unless that document has been sealed.
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On Friday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Deputy Director Thomas Homan joined elected and law enforcement officials to announce that ICE Homeland Security Investigations special agents have trained more than 300 law enforcement personnel in Ohio this past week on dark web and illicit crypto-currency transactions associated with fentanyl smuggling.
RELATED: Drugs in the mail: Dangerous synthetic opioids ‘raised the stakes’
More than 560 people died from accidental overdoses in Montgomery County last year. Fentanyl, 100 times more potent than morphine and sometimes combined with other drugs, was responsible for the majority of those deaths.
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