Man pleads guilty to possessing 15 kg of fentanyl seized in $3.2M drug bust

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The judge seemed to want to make sure he had heard correctly just how much fentanyl the federal drug prosecutor said was found at a London address.

“15?” Superior Court Justice Michael Carnegie asked Vince Mazza, encouraging him to repeat the measurement during the brief synopsis of the case.

“Kilograms,” Mazza said.

Those were all the facts that went into the record at Taymoor Pasha’s guilty plea Friday to one count of possession of fentanyl for the purpose of trafficking. There will be more facts presented at the London man’s sentencing hearing slated for next year and more about the other 20 charges that are on his lengthy indictment.

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While the court hearing was brief and routine, the amount of drugs described to Carnegie by Mazza is massive. Sarnia police said when the drug bust and charges were announced in February 2023, that all of the drugs seized had a street value of nearly $3.2 million and the fentanyl seizure alone amounted to roughly seven million doses.

They said it was one of the largest seizures of street drugs in the region, and certainly the biggest bust ever initiated by Sarnia police.

They also said that the bust had put a large dent in the drug trafficking business across the region. Pasha was charged, along with a second person, in January 2023.

Pasha’s lone guilty plea was enough to start the process of preparing a pre-sentence report for his next hearing. He told Carnegie he understood he had given up his right to a trial by entering the initial plea.

“Guilty,” the 24-year-old tall, bespectacled man with a beard said while he stood in the prisoner’s box.

Mazza told the judge that the drugs were discovered in “a stash house” belonging to Pasha during a police search on Jan. 26, 2023. He told Carnegie he would not elaborate any more about the case until Pasha’s next hearing.

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Sarnia police said in February 2023 that the investigation was a three-month effort initiated after a tip that a man with ties to London was trafficking large quantities of fentanyl, cocaine and other drugs in Sarnia and across Southwestern Ontario.

Sarnia police and the OPP’s guns-and-gangs enforcement team joined forces for the investigation and were able to identify two London addresses, one on Cheapside Street and one on Mornington Avenue, suspected to be part of the drug trafficking scheme.

Search warrants turned up 15 kilograms of fentanyl, more than 3.4 kilograms of cocaine, 1.4 kilograms of MDMA, more commonly known as ecstasy, and a large number of prescription pills including oxycodone, codeine, morphine, Percocet, hydromorphone and others. Also seized was a Ruger handgun.

The large seizure of fentanyl was particularly significant. The synthetic opioid that is highly addictive and up to 100 times more powerful than morphine has been identified as the main culprit in the ongoing opioid drug crisis across Ontario and the rest of the country.

Not only has it ravaged the lives of the addicted, it has also been proven to be fatal to drug users who unknowingly purchase drugs that have been mixed with the opioid.

A second person charged in the investigation is expected to go on trial in May.

Pasha’s case returns in the new year.

jsims@postmedia.com

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