BOSTON – A Quincy man has been sentenced for drug trafficking offenses in reference to conspiring to distribute and possess, and possessing with intent to distribute, over a kilogram of fentanyl, together with counterfeit fentanyl tablets.
Damian Cortez, 34, was sentenced on Dec. 15, 2022 by U.S. District Courtroom Choose Leo T. Sorokin to eight years in jail and three years of supervised launch. On June 23, 2022, Cortez pleaded responsible to at least one depend of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute managed substances and one depend of possession with intent to distribute fentanyl.
Cortez is considered one of 10 defendants indicted collectively in June 2020 as a part of a broader federal sweep focusing on quite a few NOB avenue gang members and associates during which 31 whole defendants had been charged. All of Cortez’s co-defendants have pleaded responsible to numerous prices and are scheduled to be sentenced within the upcoming months.
Based on courtroom paperwork, NOB – an abbreviation for the Norton/Olney/Barry streets in Dorchester – is a violent prison enterprise whose members and associates are concerned in quite a few kinds of prison actions all through Massachusetts, together with murders, tried murders, armed robberies, drug trafficking, intercourse trafficking and unlawful firearms offenses. Quite a few contraband gadgets together with 11 firearms, over one kilogram of fentanyl (together with over 2,000 fentanyl tablets manufactured to seem as business oxycodone tablets), a business tablet press, over 15 kilos of marijuana and roughly $36,000 in money had been recovered throughout the investigation.
Cortez was a big fentanyl trafficker and NOB member/affiliate who equipped medicine to and supported varied crimes on behalf of the gang. On June 16, 2020, a search of an condominium the place Cortez was residing resulted within the seizure of a business tablet press, dyes, slicing agent, and over a kilogram of fentanyl, a few of which was pressed into tablets manufactured to seem as pharmaceutical-grade oxycodone tablets, amongst different drug trafficking paraphernalia.
First Assistant United States Lawyer Joshua S. Levy; Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox; James Ferguson, Particular Agent in Cost of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, Boston Area Division; Joseph R. Bonavolonta, Particular Agent in Cost of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division; Bryan Kyes, U.S. Marshal for the District of Massachusetts; Colonel Christopher Mason, Superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police; New Bedford Police Chief Joseph C. Cordeiro; Quincy Police Chief Paul Keenan; Randolph Police Chief Anthony Marag; Brockton Police Chief Brenda Perez; Stoughton Police Chief Donna McNamara; Suffolk County District Lawyer Kevin Hayden; Suffolk County Sheriff Steven W. Tompkins; Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph D. McDonald, Jr.; Bristol County District Lawyer Thomas M. Quinn III; and Norfolk County Sheriff Patrick W. McDermott made the announcement. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael Crowley and Sarah Hoefle of the Organized Crime & Gang Unit prosecuted the case.