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From left to right: U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams for the District of Oregon; U.S. Attorney D. Michael Hurst Jr. for the Southern District of Mississippi; U.S. Attorney Christopher C. Myers for the District of North Dakota; Assistant Commissioner Joanne Crampton, Federal Policing Criminal Operations, Royal Canadian Mounted Police; Acting DEA Administrator Robert W. Patterson; Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein; Acting ICE Deputy Director Peter T. Edge; Acting Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Blanco of the Criminal Division; Special Agent in Charge Jae Alex Khu of ICE HIS St. Paul, Minnesota
Eli Alford for the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys
“These cases reflect a new and disturbing facet of the opioid crisis in America. More and more of our citizens are being killed by fentanyls, synthetic opioids that are often much stronger than heroin. A few grains of fentanyl can be a lethal dose.”—Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein
Eli Alford for the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys
Description:
The Justice Department announced today that federal grand juries in the Southern District of Mississippi and the District of North Dakota returned indictments, unsealed yesterday, against two Chinese nationals and their North American based traffickers and distributors for separate conspiracies to distribute large quantities of fentanyl and fentanyl analogues and other opiate substances in the United States. The Chinese nationals are the first manufacturers and distributors of fentanyl and other opiate substances to be designated as Consolidated Priority Organization Targets (CPOTs). CPOT designations are those who have “command and control” elements of the most prolific international drug trafficking and money laundering organizations.