Lego box conceals ‘candy-like’ drugs in biggest NYC fentanyl bust
About 15,000 fentanyl pills were found hidden in a Lego box in what authorities are calling the largest seizure of the dangerous synthetic opioid in New York City to date.
Federal and state agents discovered the drugs on September 28, when the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York Task Force observed a woman carrying a strange duffel bag to a car near Manhattan’s Hudson Yards.
After searching the duffel bags, they discovered a yellow Lego container. Inside they found ‘brick-shaped packages covered in black tape lying next to LEGO blocks.’ The pills spilled out of the packages when opened.
The NYC Special Narcotics Prosecutor charged Latesha Bush, of Trenton, New Jersey, with possession of a controlled substance.
Bush, 48, was driving a rental car and had just traveled into the city from New Jersey.
‘Disguising fentanyl as candy – and concealing it in children’s toys – will never hide the fact that fentanyl is a deadly poison that harms our communities, our families, and our city,’ NYC Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said.
The pills are mass produced by the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in Mexico, then smuggled over the border to sell in the US. The cartels use colored pills to mimic candy and prescription drugs, the DEA said.
The DEA said the pills found last Wednesday were imprinted with 30M, and were likely meant to pass on the black market as 30 milligram Oxycodone Hydrochloride tablets.
‘Using happy colors to make a deadly drug seem fun and harmless is a new low, even for the Mexican cartels,’ NYC Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G Brennan said. ‘Fentanyl is already involved in more than 80% of overdose deaths in the city. If you take any drug sold on the street or through the internet, regardless of its medicinal markings or festive appearance, you risk your life.’
DEA Special Agent Frank Tarentino called rainbow fentanyl a ‘clear and present danger’ in New York City, and said that about 40 percent of the pills they analyze in their labs contain a lethal dosage.
The DEA’s most recent 15-week operation in New York removed around 500,000 lethal pills from circulation, Tarentino said.
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