MORGANTOWN – In its medicinal, prescription form, fentanyl is already 80 to 100 times more powerful than morphine.
And the amount of the drug seized that was slated for street use during last year’s arrest of LaShawn Monroe, Matt Harvey said, was enough to kill every resident of West Virginia – two-and-a-half times over.
“That’s every man woman and child,” Harvey, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia said Wednesday.
Harvey and representatives of the FBI and local and state law enforcement gathered at the Monongalia County Sheriff’s office to announce Monroe’s legal fate from the day before in Clarksburg.
Monroe, 31, a Detroit native who came to north-central West Virginia to traffic drugs, was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the operation that would have put 24 pounds of fentanyl on the streets here.
He maintained residences in Morgantown and in Fairmont – where the bulk of the contraband was seized from a stash house.
The take by authorities also included nearly 22 pounds of methamphetamine, almost five pounds of crack and powder cocaine, 412 grams of heroin, some 35 firearms and $270,000 in money from drug deals already gone down.
“Make no mistake,” Harvey said, “this was a high-volume, sophisticated and profitable enterprise.”
Monroe, the attorney said, bolstered that enterprise with a distribution network that moved the drugs from California to Michigan and then, finally, West Virginia.
At least eight people in Monroe’s employ sold the drugs in Monongalia and Marion counties, Harvey said, which carried a street value of $812,000 – making it the largest seizure by the Northern District office to date.
“These numbers, quite frankly, are as terrifying as they are staggering,” he said.
The investigation was a joint effort between the FBI, local law enforcement, the Mon Metro Drug Task Force and Drug Enforcement Administration offices in Detroit, Columbus and Cleveland.
“Every pound of dangerous drugs taken off the streets is one less opportunity for addiction, overdose and violence,” said Amie Loos, an assistant special agent in charge with the FBI’s Pittsburgh division.
“Drug trafficking organizations don’t care about the damage they leave behind,” she said.
Meanwhile, Harvey said, he’s confident Monroe’s arrest and subsequent prison message is sending strong ripples back to Detroit.
The Mountain State, the U.S. attorney said, is not an automatic soft target for ill-intent from the Motor City.
“A sentence like this gets back in a big way. His sentence should serve as a warning to anyone who thinks they can profit by endangering West Virginians.”
