After operating a drug delivery service for more than seven years, a man has been sentenced to prison for selling contaminated drugs that caused the deaths of three individuals in New York City within a single day.
On Thursday, Billy Ortega, who is also known as “Jason” as per the Southern District of New York’s U.S. Attorney’s Office, received his sentence after being found guilty of various offenses, such as conspiracy to distribute, possession of a firearm, and distribution of drugs that led to fatalities.
According to a recent news release, Ortega, who is 37 years old, has received a sentence of 30 years in prison and will also be subjected to five years of supervised release.
Ortega, as per court documents and evidence presented during the trial, employed a team of workers, consisting of family members and close friends, to distribute illegal drugs in New York City from 2015 to 2022. Ortega operated the drug delivery service by sending text messages and working as a dispatcher by managing deliveries between the customers and couriers.
According to a news release, Ortega deliberately added fentanyl to a “mild batch of cocaine” in March 2021, which was subsequently sold to a minimum of five customers who were unaware of the presence of fentanyl in the cocaine.
Prior to the delivery of drugs to the three individuals who passed away on March 17, Ortega received word from another customer that an individual who had consumed the spiked cocaine the previous day had overdosed and required hospitalization, along with a dose of naloxone, a medication used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.
According to court documents, Ortega took charge of delivering the laced drugs to Julia Ghahramani, Amanda Scher, and Ross Mtangi after receiving the text. Tragically, all three victims passed away on the same day.
In the same day, Ortega reached out to another drug dealer and asked if he was interested in giving the cocaine to “some girls.” He informed the dealer via text message that others had mentioned the drug was “too strong.” Ortega continued his drug dealing activities for another year before he was apprehended.
“Ortega’s callous and remarkably evil conduct rightly deserved a significant sentence,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in the news release. “This sentence sends a message to the fentanyl traffickers causing the fentanyl epidemic in our communities that they will bear the most serious consequences.”
