CRIME:
Drug officers in Las Vegas capture 13 pounds of meth and 90K fentanyl tablets while a youngster was in the backseat…
LAS VEGAS (KLAS): During a bust on Wednesday, drug agents found over 90,000 illegal fentanyl pills and 13 pounds of methamphetamine. The alleged dealer was selling the stash as a youngster was seated in a booster seat.
According to documents, Jorge Rodriguez-Medina and Jose Sanchez-Lobo are accused of conspiring to distribute fentanyl and of possessing meth and fentanyl with the aim to distribute them.
According to records, the DEA was notified earlier this month about a Mexican man who was selling fentanyl and tablets in Las Vegas. Then, on February 21, in a parking area close to Owens Avenue and Nellis Boulevard in the east valley, an undercover officer consented to buy roughly 90,000 fentanyl tablets from the man’s courier, according to records.
Investigators said a man, later identified as Rodriguez-Medina, arrived at the sale and said he was there to “count the money.” Several minutes later, another man, identified as Sanchez-Lobo arrived in a car with a woman and a small child in the backseat, documents said.
“The [undercover officer] spoke to Sanchez-Lobo regarding the transaction from the passenger-side door, at which point Sanchez-Lobo told the [officer] that the narcotics were in a gym bag in the rear-passenger compartment and then lifted the gym bag off the rear floorboard and placed the bag on the rear passenger-side seat,” documents said.
Inside the bag were bags with a substance “resembling methamphetamine and small blue pills resembling fentanyl pills,” documents said.
Undercover agents then arrested the two men. The amount of methamphetamine in the bag weighed nearly 13 pounds. There were about 90,000 fentanyl pills also in the bag.
DEA agents did not disclose the Mexican man’s identity, saying it remained unknown as of Thursday.
Just a few grains of fentanyl are enough to kill a person, DEA agents said. Ingesting the so-called “M-30” pills can be even more dangerous because different pills can contain different chemicals and mixtures.
The number of overdose deaths in Clark County involving fentanyl increased 97% — from 73 deaths to 144 deaths — between 2020 and 2023, the Southern Nevada Health District said. Across the country, about 108,000 people died from a drug overdose from August 2021 to August 2022, with the majority of deaths involving fentanyl.
There was no information in the men’s court docket about possible bail or if a future court date was scheduled as of Thursday. Because the case was in federal court, no booking photos were released.
