Jorge Miguel Arteaga Medina, a drug dealer from Dallas, Texas, was given more than eight years in federal prison for putting fentanyl tablets in his child’s stuffed teddy bear.
After Medina admitted guilt in February, U.S. District Judge Ada Brown handed down a 97-month federal prison term for possession with the intent to distribute a prohibited narcotic. Photos of the pills in the toddler’s toy and posters praising “Santa Muerte,” a character linked to drug trafficking, were presented as evidence at the sentencing trial.
After admitting to having thousands of fentanyl tablets in his possession, Medina was arrested as a result of the investigation. Some were stashed in Medina’s bedroom closet, while the rest were hidden in his child’s teddy bear.
A source approached Medina in March and April of 2023 to purchase over 170 grams of fentanyl.
Medina invited agents to his residence, where his family lived. A Smith & Wesson pistol was found on Arteaga Medina’s person, and he confessed to possessing illegal drugs in his residence.
The Drug Enforcement Administration claims that drug traffickers utilize pill presses to compress fentanyl into tablets and stamp logos and marks that mimic those of common medications.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) confiscated more than 79 million fentanyl-containing counterfeit tablets in 2023, a 33% rise from 2022.
The most recent strategy used by Mexican drug traffickers to get narcotics into the United States is to disguise them as common produce.
Officials from US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) found over 2 tons of crystal meth, a potent stimulant, in containers shaped like green watermelons at the port of Otay Mesa in San Diego, California, not long ago.
During secondary inspection, a truck operated by a 29-year-old male proved to contain nearly five thousand pounds of meth worth $5 million, hidden amid an inventory of actual watermelons. Over 1200 of these phony watermelons were discovered.
On August 8, during a farmers market in Forest Park, Georgia, investigators from the Atlanta division of the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered more than 2,500 pounds of meth with $3.2 million hidden amid crates of celery.
