Leader of deadly San Antonio opioid pill mill pleads guilty

The ringleader of a San Antonio pill mill that cranked out thousands of fake prescription pills laced with deadly fentanyl has pleaded guilty to drug and firearm charges.

Alaa Mohammed Allawi, an Iraqi native who served as an interpreter for U.S. military forces, took a plea deal late Wednesday following a pretrial hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard Farrer.

Allawi, 30, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 400 grams or more of fentanyl, using a gun during a drug crime and conspiracy to launder money. He admitted selling the black-market drugs that resulted in the overdose death of a San Antonio-area user.

On ExpressNews.com: Feds take down opioid ring and shut down its pill lab

As part of the deal, Allawi agreed to be sentenced later to 30 years in federal prison, and to forfeit to federal authorities several items, including cash, virtual currency, a 2013 Maserati Grand Turismo and other high-end cars, a Northwest Side house that served as a pill lab, his franchise in DRNK Coffee + Tea and several guns that were seized from a local stash house.

He also agreed to a $14.3 million judgment — an amount the feds allege his ring made on the sales of pills.

Allawi’s ring manufactured pain and anxiety pills laced with fentanyl or other drugs using commercial pill presses obtained from China, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said. The ring was believed to have obtained the fentanyl from the black market in China.

The group then used the dark web — where anything from illegal drugs and black-market guns to fake IDs is available for sale — to sell the drugs, officials said.

Fentanyl is an opioid pain medication with a rapid onset and short duration. It’s 50 times stronger than heroin and 80 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, according to DEA agents and federal prosecutors. Fentanyl is largely responsible for the tripling of overdose deaths related to synthetic opioids since 2013, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported in 2017.

On ExpressNews.com: Opioid pill lab defendant takes a plea deal

Dante Sorianello, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA in San Antonio, has said that the Alamo City has seen an uptick in opioid distribution.

“It’s new to San Antonio in that we actually were becoming the source for the distribution of fentanyl throughout the country,” Sorianello said in a previous interview. “This is just one organization.”

Fentanyl sometimes is mixed with heroin or other drugs and can be deadly.

Tiny specks of the powder have overdosed police officers around the country who unknowingly handled the substance at crime scenes.

Agents believe several people may have died from using the fentanyl-laced pills, including some in San Antonio.

One was a 22-year-old man from Pipe Creek who overdosed in 2017 in Bexar County on fentanyl-laced pills.

On ExpressNews.com: An ordinary couple who drove ‘raggedy cars’ are accused fentanyl kingpins

Last year, Homeland Security agents also dismantled an unrelated fentanyl distribution ring that grew out of a national crackdown on opioids. In a press conference in Ohio, then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions accused Matthew and Holly Roberts, who were married and living in San Antonio at the time, of leading the largest online fentanyl distribution network in the country.

Matthew Roberts, 37, was sentenced in Ohio in February to more than 11 years in federal prison without parole while Holly Roberts, 36, who divorced him, got eight years. She is in a federal prison in Bryan, Texas, while he is serving his term in Three Rivers, south of San Antonio.