Man who smuggled fentanyl to Dallas in child’s teddy bear gets 8 years in federal prison
_fitted.png "A Dallas man will spend eight years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to smuggling fentanyl to Dallas from Mexico, including in his child’s teddy bear bag.")
A Dallas drug trafficker who tried smuggling fentanyl pills in his child’s teddy bear-shaped bag will spend eight years in federal prison after pleading guilty to possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, according to a Department of Justice news release.
Jorge Miguel Arteaga Medina, 23, was charged and indicted in April 2023, according to the release. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Ada Brown.
Medina said in his plea that he got the pills from a supplier in Mexico known to authorities as “22,” then sold the fentanyl to customers in the Dallas area, according to the release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas. In February 2023, a confidential source bought 171 grams of fentanyl pills from him in a meeting that was recorded.
During that sale, Medina told the informant to contact him if they needed more pills in the future, according to the Justice Department. In April 2023, the source reached out to Medina to buy more pills. Medina said he had around 3,000 pills but would need to contact his boss in Mexico if the source needed more than that. Authorities believe the boss was “22.”
When agents with the Drug Enforcement Agency approached Medina and informed him of the investigation, he admitted he had a large quantity of pills in his apartment and a handgun inside a bag strapped to his chest, according to the release. Medina took the agents to the apartment where his wife and young child lived and showed them the pills.
Some of the pills were in his bedroom closet and the rest were inside his child’s stuffed animal, according to the DOJ.
Prosecutors submitted photographs in court Tuesday depicting the pills inside the stuffed animal along with posters of Santa Muerte, the so-called patron saint of drug dealers, also known as Our Lady of Holy Death.