A Laguna Hills drug dealer was sentenced Friday to 20 years in federal prison after a pair of his customers overdosed on fentanyl in a six-week span in 2021.
Jason Amin Soheili, 28, pleaded guilty in December to two counts of distribution of fentanyl resulting in death, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release.
He was arrested in May 2021, weeks after the fatal overdoses in February and April of that year.
The February victim, a Utah resident only identified by the initials “J.N.,” was mailed fake oxycodone pills that were laced with fentanyl.
“On February 21, 2021, J.N. ingested at least one of the pills and died of fentanyl toxicity,” the release said.
Officials said previously that J.N. had dropped out of a rehabilitation program the month before his death.
On April 1, Soheili met with another customer, this one known as “J.M.,” at a 7-Eleven in Laguna Hills to sell cocaine and alprazolam, which is often known as its brand name, Xanax.
“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 of “acute fentanyl, alprazolam, and cocaine intoxication,” officials said.
Officials previously said that the cocaine was laced with fentanyl, and J.M. died in his parents’ bedroom at their Aliso Viejo home.
Soheili was identified through the work of the DEA-led Overdose Justice Task Force.