By Laura Strickler, Stephanie Gosk and Rich Schapiro —
NBC News
Federal drug enforcement officers and prosecutors in Colorado held a news conference in July to inform the public that they had successfully removed a massive amount of fentanyl from the streets amid a spate of overdose deaths in that state.
"I wanted to give you something different today, not just a doom and gloom story," said Brian Besser, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Denver Field Division.
“I wanted them to see that aggressive and tenacious police work is being done behind the scenes and legal action is being taken to save lives and bring people to justice.”
Among the cases Besser highlighted was
the seizure of 114 pounds of pure fentanyl in June, enough to kill more than 25 million people
, he said.
The operation was described as the largest fentanyl bust in history on a US highway.
"We're doing our job," Besser said.
Prosecutors from the 18th Judicial District and DEA agents seized 114 pounds of pure fentanyl in Colorado. Colorado State Patrol
But the agent left out what happened right after this record seizure:
the DEA lost track of the man transporting this huge amount of drugs.
The suspect, David Maldonado, 27, had agreed to cooperate with federal agents and help them apprehend drug traffickers in South Bend, Indiana, where he said the fentanyl was headed, according to the Colorado State Patrol. .
But while on his way to make the deal with DEA agents, Maldonado managed to throw them off the scent and get rid of the tracker they had planted on his car.
He is now considered a fugitive.
"This is a fiasco for the DEA"
The case represents an embarrassing episode for the DEA at a time when drug cartels are flooding the United States with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin, and the overdose rate is skyrocketing.
A spokesman for the Colorado State Patrol, which made the initial discovery of the fentanyl, criticized the botched operation.
David Maldonado. via Facebook
"The DEA was working with us and they reached an agreement with the driver," said Trooper Chief Gary Cutler.
"It slipped out on them after they worked the case, and that was their debacle."
Maria “Maki” Haberfeld, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former DEA consultant, said agents should have known they needed extra vigilance over the potential cooperator they didn't have enough time to investigate.
"This is a fiasco for the DEA," Haberfeld said.
DEA spokeswoman Katherine Pfaff declined to comment to NBC News, citing the ongoing investigation.
But after this article was published, an agency official confirmed the seizure of 114 pounds of fentanyl.
“Those drugs have remained in the possession of the authorities ever since,” the official said.
"The DEA is relentlessly pursuing the individuals who were involved in the trafficking of the seized fentanyl and will continue to do so."
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More than 100,000 overdose deaths in the United States
Overdose deaths in the United States topped 100,000 for the first time last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), driven largely by fentanyl.
Of the 107,622 fatal overdoses recorded in 2021, 71,238, or 66%, were related to fentanyl.
This highly potent opioid is cheaper than other drugs and comes in a white powder form, allowing traffickers to mix it with cocaine and other drugs or stamp it into prescription pills like Xanax to stretch their supply and increase profits.
In many cases,
cocaine and fentanyl pills have killed people who didn't know they were using it
.
But some drug users now seek out fentanyl for its intense psychoactive effects.
In Colorado, fentanyl deaths have increased more than tenfold in the last five years, from 81 in 2017 to more than 900 in 2021, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Overdose deaths have also spiked in Indiana, where the fentanyl from the Colorado raid was apparently headed.
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“How bad is it?
It's everywhere,” said Robin Vida, director of health, outreach, promotion and education for the St. Joseph County Health Department, which covers the South Bend area.
How was the fentanyl trafficker discovered?
The Maldonado case, first reported by
The Denver Gazette
, began with a routine traffic stop.
An arrest warrant application, filed in Colorado district court by a state trooper, provides a detailed account of the events leading up to Maldonado's disappearance.
At about 10:37 a.m. on June 18, police saw a car weaving in and out of traffic on Interstate 70 west of Denver.
The policeman stopped the car and noted that the driver was “exceptionally nervous”.
The driver, identified as Maldonado, told police that he had spent a week in the city of Grand Junction visiting family.
But the policeman knew that the story was a lie;
he had checked Maldonado's license plate before the stop and learned that it had been scanned by a license plate reader in Southern California about 24 hours earlier.
David Maldonado via Facebook
The police officer checked the interior of Maldonado's car and found that it was empty except for a couple of energy drinks, some gas station snacks and a blanket in the back seat.
"Maldonado's nervousness did not subside during the entire conversation," even though the officer told him he was not going to be given a ticket, just a warning, according to the warrant request.
Maldonado claimed that he was not nervous;
he just had to go to the bathroom “very urgently”.
At first he refused to let police search his car, but then he relented because he wanted to get back on the road, according to the court document.
The policeman allowed him to drive three miles to the next exit to go to the bathroom.
While Maldonado was in the bathroom, the officer walked his drug-sniffing dog around the vehicle.
The dog signaled the presence of drugs, the affidavit says, prompting police to search the interior of the car.
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Police found a hiding place in the floor of the truck, the affidavit says.
When he opened it, he made a startling discovery: there were 48 packets of fentanyl powder.
In all, they weighed 114 pounds, the court document says.
After the police stopped him, Maldonado agreed to speak with a DEA agent.
In addition to telling the agent that the drugs were headed for South Bend, Maldonado said that he had picked up the fentanyl in California and that he had made a drug delivery at least once before, the affidavit says.
Maldonado agreed to complete the delivery of the drug so the DEA could identify higher-ranking traffickers in the criminal network.
The next day, Maldonado undertook the controlled delivery with a tracking device attached to his car.
But at some point on his journey — it's unclear where — he managed to evade surveillance and remove the tracker, the affidavit says.
Maldonado is wanted on two felony charges: unlawful distribution of more than 225 grams of a controlled substance and introduction of said substance into the state of Colorado.
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The US Marshals confirmed that their Colorado Violent Offender Task Force is searching for
Maldonado, who is described in the affidavit as being 6 feet 2 inches tall
and weighing 245 pounds. kg).
"Due to the sensitive nature of our investigation, we are unable to provide any additional information at this time to avoid compromising any aspect of our case," the agency said in a statement.
Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI deputy director and national security contributor for NBC News, said the DEA is most likely conducting an internal investigation.
“We have a record amount of fentanyl involved here, in fact enough fentanyl to kill everyone in the state of Colorado,” Figliuzzi said.
“The individual who was delivering that amount of fentanyl is now free.
And there appear to be no other criminals in custody, as far as we know, so it's a massive failure,” he added.
What we know about Maldonado
Maldonado has family in Mexico but grew up in the small town of West Liberty, Iowa, of 3,800 people, according to the warrant request.
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He was a member of the West Liberty High School football team for at least one season, according to the Max Preps high school sports website.
But he started getting in trouble with the law when he was still a teenager.
In August 2013, he was pulled over by police, who allegedly found a marijuana pipe in his car, as well as a gun wrapped in a pillowcase, according to a report in the Iowa daily
The Muscatine Journal
.
A search of his bedroom found more than 21 grams of marijuana in 23 bags, along with a weighing device, according to the newspaper.
The charges were later dismissed, according to the online judicial search.
Maldonado has two Facebook accounts, but rarely posts.
The last one was in March, three months before the Colorado traffic stop.
It consisted of a photo of her standing on top of a large rock holding what appears to be a machete.
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On an older Facebook page, he posted a comment in July 2020 lamenting that only nine people had reacted to a new profile picture.
"And not one is from someone close to me," Maldonado wrote in Spanish.
“What's the point of being born here if my loved ones can't be here?
man, what road more j--- has touched me!”.
NBC News has contacted multiple family members, but they have not responded or declined to comment.
"I don't know anything about (Maldonado) and I wish not to be bothered by whatever he's gotten himself into," a relative said.