A man from Arlington, Virginia, will spend 10 years behind bars for his role in trafficking fentanyl through counterfeit prescription pills, according to authorities.
Taurean Venable, 37, was sentenced for distributing over seven kilograms of fentanyl by packaging the substance as legitimate pain medications, such as Oxycodone, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Venable and his co-conspirators would then give the pills to redistributors and users in the D.C. area for profit.
Venable is the third man to be receive prison time as a part of law enforcement’s effort to thwart this trafficking conspiracy. Cornelius Frazier, 33, of Arlington, and Kyle Bouldin, 31, of Woodbridge, were both previously sentenced to 151 months and 72 months, respectively, for their involvement.
Authorities said that they first began cracking down on this group in June 2020.
The attorney’s office said that, during a court-authorized search of a co-conspirator’s home in Arlington, they found pill manufacturing materials, a loaded, semi-automatic AK-47 and nearly $35,000 in cash, along with over seven kilograms of fentanyl in both pill and raw form.
The attorney’s office went on to say that Venable’s home was authorized for a search after his arrest, where law enforcement found more than $23,000 in drug proceeds.
