Record seizure of carfentanyl | Twelve years in prison for a Montrealer

Carfentanyl is so dangerous that even a grain of salt’s worth is deadly. Jamaal McKenzie was trafficking nearly 2 kg of this opioid 10,000 times more powerful than morphine. An “unprecedented” quantity in Quebec. The Montreal trafficker was sentenced last Monday to 12 years in prison.

Louis-Samuel Perron
The Press

It was the largest carfentanyl seizure in Quebec history. Investigators from the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) had just completed their search when they came face to face with trafficker Jamaal McKenzie in the lobby of the Crescent Street building in April 2021. This is this 42-year-old Montrealer who “controlled” this drug cache. He was arrested on the spot.

In this apartment located close to the Museum of Fine Arts, investigators seized countless lethal doses of carfentanyl, an opioid 100 times more powerful than fentanyl. Carfentanyl is among other things used by veterinarians to sedate elephants. In addition to half a kilo of mixed fentanyl, the traffickers prepared 1.765 kg of carfentanyl, part of which was mixed with etizolam, a tranquilizer.

The drug was worth $1.4 million on the black market at the time, wrote The Press last year. The police have also managed to link Jamaal McKenzie’s network of traffickers to at least a dozen red heroin overdoses that have occurred in the previous months in downtown Montreal, revealed The Press.

To put the scale of the seizure into context, the police were delighted to have got their hands on 85 g of fentanyl in the summer of 2020. It was then the second largest fentanyl seizure in Montreal since 2017. Just 2 mg (0.002 g) of fentanyl, or even less, is enough to cause death.

“Carfentanyl is 100 times more potent than fentanyl. There is no precedent for such a quantity of carfentanyl in Quebec,” said the Crown prosecutor, Ms.^e Jean-Philippe MacKay, last Monday at the Montreal courthouse. “Fortunately,” then retorted judge Hélène Morin.

Fentanyl and carfentanyl are a scourge in the United States and western Canada. But these opioids are also increasingly present in Quebec. Often mixed with other drugs, such as heroin, without the consumer’s knowledge, these cheap opioids lead to many overdoses.

About 20 Canadians die every day from opioid poisoning. Of these, 86% of those deaths involved fentanyl between January and September 2021, according to Health Canada. In Quebec alone, there are 450 deaths linked to opioid poisoning in 2021, an increase for two years, according to the authorities.

“A very, very reasonable sentence”

“It’s a very, very reasonable sentence. I’m sure you understand, Mr. McKenzie,” said Judge Hélène Morin. The magistrate endorsed the joint suggestion of the lawyers by imposing 12 years in prison on the 42-year-old Montrealer following his admission of guilt.

However, given his criminal record, the sentence could have been “much higher”, said Judge Morin. However, she was bound by the lawyers’ suggestion. He has about 10 years and 3 months left on his sentence, taking into account preventive detention.

“I don’t know about this business. It just happened that I fell in the face of that, ”explained in English Jamaal McKenzie, answering a question from the judge. The accused was represented by Mr.^e Jose Guede.

Jamaal McKenzie was sentenced to six and a half years in prison in the United States in 2013 in a “grandparent fraud” case. According to an FBI press release, the Montrealer and his accomplices put $840,000 in their pockets by defrauding at least 39 victims in several American states.

Also accused in this case, Laval resident Eddwich Simon, 35, was sentenced last February to 90 days in prison to be served over the weekend. A third defendant, Curtis Harris, 38, was back in court on Tuesday. The latter was responsible for the fentanyl trafficking operations, according to the facts admitted by Jamaal McKenzie.