ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. A drug dealer in Orange County, Calif. was sentenced Friday to 20 years in federal prison after two of his customers overdosed on fentanyl in a six-week span in 2021.
Jason Amin Soheili, 28, of Laguna Hills, was arrested in May 2021, shortly after two drug users who obtained narcotics from him died of fatal overdoses in February and April of that year. He subsequently pleaded guilty in December to two counts of distribution of fentanyl resulting in death, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The drug user who died in February 2021 was a Utah resident, and simply identified by the initials “J.N.” This person was mailed fake oxycodone pills that were laced with fentanyl, KTLA reported.
“On February 21, 2021, J.N. ingested at least one of the pills and died of fentanyl toxicity,” the DOJ press release said.
About a month before his death, officials said J.N. dropped out of a rehabilitation program.
Soheili met with another customer April 1, 2021. This individual was identified as “J.M.” A narcotic transaction involving cocaine and Xanax occurred between the two at a 7-Eleven in Laguna Hills.
“After this meeting, J.M. accompanied Soheili to a home in Laguna Hills, where Soheili supplied the victim with additional drugs,” the DOJ said. “At some point late that evening, the victim ingested the narcotics that Soheili had given him.”
J.M. died the next day in his parents’ bedroom at their home in Aliso Viejo of “acute fentanyl, alprazolam, and cocaine intoxication,” officials noted, according to KTLA.
Soheili was investigated and arrested as a result of the work by the DEA-led Overdose Justice Task Force.
