A fentanyl courier moving enough to kill millions got busted, then slipped the DEA

David Maldonado managed to drive away from DEA agents after agreeing to cooperate with them following a 114-pound fentanyl bust.

Federal drug agents and prosecutors in Colorado held a news conference in July to tout their work taking fentanyl off the streets amid a string of highly publicized overdose deaths.

“I wanted to give you guys something different today — not just a doom and gloom story,” Brian Besser, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Denver Field Division, said. “I wanted you to see that behind the scenes there is aggressive and tenacious police work being done and prosecution being done to save lives and to bring people to justice.”

Among the cases Besser highlighted was the seizure of 114 pounds of pure fentanyl in June — enough, he said, to kill more than 25 million people. He described it as the largest fentanyl bust on a U.S. highway in history. 

“We are not asleep at the wheel,” Besser said. 

It was a curious turn of phrase given what had happened just after the record fentanyl seizure — a stunning blunder that went unmentioned during the July 6 news conference.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/dea-lost-track-drug-mule-114-pound-fentanyl-bust-rcna49419

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