Man pleads guilty to possession of 15kg of fentanyl seized in $3.2 million drug bust

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The judge appeared to want to make sure he heard correctly how much fentanyl a federal narcotics prosecutor said was found at the London address.

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“15?” Superior Court Judge Michael Carnegie asked Vince Mazza, encouraging him to repeat the measurements, during the case brief.

“Kilograms,” said Mazza.

Those were all the facts that entered the record during Taimur 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, scheduled for next year, and more about the other 20 charges contained in his lengthy indictment.

Although the trial was short and routine, the amount of drugs described by Carnegie Maza is enormous. When the drug seizures and charges were announced in February 2023, Sarnia police said the street value of all the drugs seized was nearly $3.2 million, and the fentanyl alone seized was approximately seven million doses.

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They said it was one of the largest street drug busts in the region, and by far the largest bust ever initiated by Sarnia police.

They also said that the robbery had seriously damaged the drug trade in the region. Pasha and another person were charged in January 2023.

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

“Guilty,” said the tall, bearded, bespectacled 24-year-old as he stood in the cell.

Mazza told the judge that the drugs were discovered in a “stash” belonging to Pasha during a police search on January 26, 2023. He told Carnegie that he would say no more about the case until Pasha’s next hearing.

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In February 2023, Sarnia police said the investigation lasted three months after it became known that a man with ties to London was selling large quantities of fentanyl, cocaine and other drugs in Sarnia and southwestern Ontario.

Sarnia police and the OPP’s anti-gun and anti-gang team joined forces to investigate and were able to identify two addresses in London, one on Cheapside Street and one on Mornington Avenue, suspected of being part of a drug trafficking scheme.

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

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The extraction of fentanyl was particularly significant. A synthetic opioid that is highly addictive and 100 times stronger than morphine has been identified as the main culprit behind the ongoing opioid drug crisis in Ontario and the rest of the country.

Not only has it devastated the lives of addicts, but it has also been proven deadly to drug users who unknowingly buy drugs mixed with an opioid.

A second defendant in the investigation is expected to appear in court in May.

Pasha’s case returns in the new year.

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