3 men plead guilty after possessing more than 1M fentanyl pills
Three Mexican men have pleaded guilty to federal drug charges after they were caught with more than 1 million fentanyl pills in El Monte last year.
Florencio Camacho Allan, 29; Gerardo Gaxiola Patiño, 30, and Alex Valdez Oroz, 26, each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute fentanyl on Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release.
The men, all from Sinaloa, Mexico, conspired to sell 2 million pills between September 2022 and March 2023, when they were arrested.
On March 7 of that year, the trio went to a Denny’s restaurant in El Segundo to meet with a buyer for the narcotics.
At that meeting, “they discussed the plan to sell approximately 1 million more fentanyl pills later that day, and the sale of another 1 million fentanyl pills the next day,” the DOJ said.
Allan and the buyer agreed to meet in a Holiday Inn parking lot, where they and Oroz were detained by law enforcement. Patiño was detained in a bathroom in the hotel lobby.
In the trio’s vehicle, officials found three duffle bags containing more than 1 million fentanyl pills, which weighed about 240 pounds.
The men are scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 13. They face a mandatory minimum of 10 years in federal prison and a maximum sentence of life.
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