WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – The New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office has arrested a suspect involved in a fatal overdose investigation that started in May of last year.
Michael Lawrence Walker Jr. was arrested on Friday, Nov. 8 and is suspected of selling and delivering fentanyl to 28-year-old Hannah Holt on May 7, 2023.
Holt was found dead inside an apartment building on Tesla Park Drive. .
Walker was charged with death by distribution, second-degree murder, PWIMSD Sch II CS and sell/deliver Sch II CS. He received no bond and awaits his first appearance in New Hanover County Superior Court.
Today, the Department of the Treasury sanctioned the leaders of La Linea, a violent Mexican drug cartel responsible for trafficking fentanyl and other drugs to the United States. The designations are just the latest example of how the US government is trying to grapple with the fentanyl epidemic, which has become one of the top national security threats to the United States. It is one of the leading causes of death among young and middle-aged Americans, having killed nearly 75,000 Americans in 2023.
Financial partnerships between Chinese money laundering organizations (CMLO) and Mexican cartels have made it more challenging for US law enforcement agencies to track the movements of drug money. Financial sanctions have so far proven an effective tool in reducing the growth in crypto-denominated fentanyl sales and should be used more frequently by the US government to tactically disrupt the trade of fentanyl and other illicit drugs.
Contrary to popular belief, good things do not always come in small packages. In fiscal year 2023, 85% of the shipments U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized for health and safety violations were small packages. The packages contained dangerous materials that could cause serious harm to American consumers and the U.S. economy. Propelled by online shopping, duty-free de minimis shipments—packages with an aggregate value of $800 or less—are skyrocketing and putting consumers at risk.
Currently, de minimis shipments account for 92% of all cargo entering the U.S. and that figure is growing in epic proportions. CBP processes approximately 4 million de minimis shipments a day, up from 2.8 million last year. Bad actors are exploiting this explosion in volume to traffic counterfeits, dangerous narcotics, and other illicit goods including precursor chemicals and materials such as pill presses and die molds used to manufacture fentanyl and other synthetic drugs that are killing Americans.
The majority of the more than 1 billion de minimis shipments CBP processed last year were in the air environment. Roughly 800 million, or 88%, of these shipments arrived through international mail; express courier services such as UPS, DHL, and FedEx; or were transported as cargo on commercial airline flights. At John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York where 25% of all de minimis shipments are processed, the volume is staggering. “On any given day, we could receive and process 750,000 to a million de minimis shipments,” said Andrew Renna, Assistant Port Director for Cargo Operations at JFK Airport. Along with four express courier facilities, the airport houses the country’s largest by volume international mail facility where 60% of international mail arrives in the U.S. “We have limited resources,” said Renna. “We only have X number of staff. There is no physical way if I doubled or even tripled my staffing that I could look at a significant percentage of that. So due to the volume, it’s a very exploitable mode of entry into the U.S.”
De minimis shipments account for 92% of all cargo entering the U.S. Above, CBP officers are offloading de minimis shipments from a plane at Los Angeles International Airport. Photo by Ya-Huei Laura Lee
“De minimis,” a Latin expression that means trivial or so minor that something can be disregarded, is anything but in the trade realm. Bad actors employ a number of techniques to smuggle items or evade paying duties. Undervaluation of goods, misclassification of merchandise, inaccurate or vague cargo descriptions, and describing products as something innocuous when, in fact, they’re harmful are just a few of the tactics.
“We’ve encountered shipments that have been declared as footwear and jackets, but found smuggled beef, pork, and poultry animal products instead,” said Renna. “The products are prohibited in the United States because of the risk of foreign animal disease. Should an animal disease outbreak occur in the United States, it could have significant impact on the U.S. economy and the world economy. Any disruption to the food supply chain causes economic harm,” said Renna. “Just this year so far at JFK, we have seized over 33,000 pounds of prohibited animal products in the de minimis environment. Many of the countries that we’ve seized this from are affected by African swine fever, foot-and-mouth disease, and avian influenza or bird flu. The beef, pork, and poultry industries are collectively worth over $200 billion annually in the U.S. and they support millions of jobs. So in just this one area, where de minimis is being exploited, it’s harmful to our domestic agriculture supply.”
Forsyth County leaders discussed plans for more than $36 million in opioid settlement money, $6 million of which is headed straight to Winston-Salem.
Forsyth County leaders discussed plans for more than $36 million in opioid settlement money, $6 million of which is headed straight to Winston-Salem.
This money will be stretched over an 18-year span; distribution of the funds started about two years ago.
During the information session that discussed this settlement money, county and municipal leaders discussed ways the community can partner together to combat the opioid crisis.
King Mayor Rick McCraw says one strategy they’re implementing is educating seniors on how to handle Narcan.
“Because a lot of seniors now are raising their grandchildren or maybe another senior mate that may have taken their medicine twice, and they need to have Narcan,” McCraw said. “To be educated to administer Narcan if it arises if you need to do that.”
But the focus is also on young people.
Cheryl Wilson lost her son to fentanyl in 2020. She says the next step in this conversation is erasing the stigma surrounding Narcan.
“It enables breathing, it enables life, it enables a family to remain intact,” Wilson said. “I distribute naloxone to anyone in need, sometimes who are not in need, because I feel like they might need it eventually. And it’s how I keep my son alive.”
County leaders say this opioid settlement has some limitations; it must be used for evidence-based treatment and prevention.
The opioid crisis has ravaged communities and families across the Carolinas. Watch this Queen City News special report on fentanyl in the Carolinas on YouTube.
Charlotte, a U.S. banking hub, was one of the first cities targeted in by a federal Treasury Department program aimed at shutting down fentanyl suppliers’ businesses.
Charlotte’s fentanyl problem has prompted federal attention and intervention. Officials involved in a U.S. Treasury program rolled out under President Joe Biden met in Charlotte Wednesday to join private and public leaders — from federal agents to sheriffs to bankers — to learn how to better shut down fentanyl traffickers’ business operations.
Charlotte — the country’s second-largest banking center — was one of the first seven U.S. cities the program, called PROTECT, visited since it launched in May. It is focused almost entirely on finding fentanyl dealers and suppliers and severing them from their money.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina has a similar program in place, but the federal involvement will enhance how information is shared between private and public sectors — or between federal agents, sheriffs and bankers, officials said. It is designed to give prosecutors more insight into how dealers move money, from quick ATM deposits to big bank account transfers.
Fentanyl has killed 37,000 North Carolinans in the last two decades, according to N.C. Department of Justice data.
The highly addictive and lethal synthetic opioid has flooded communities around Charlotte and overwhelmed local jails, police departments, courts and even classrooms, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.
Grassroots organizations, like the nonprofit Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina, tackle the trickle-down effect of fentanyl’s pervasiveness.
“A person like me — a person with a dead kid — I’m worried about getting dealers off the street,” said Barb Walsh, the executive director of the nonprofit.
The U.S. Treasury Department exists in a different sphere, she said, but those spheres can’t stay separate for much longer.
“If there’s nobody else at the national level trying to help,” she said, “then what we’re doing won’t matter.”
Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo, in an interview with The Charlotte Observer, said the department is focused on cutting the drug off at its source.
“If you are a drug dealer or if you are someone who’s running a distribution network,” he said, “you should know, and your family should know that we’re going to come after the money you are making by selling these drugs into these communities and killing our local citizens.”
Medical examiner Dr. Steven Campman told 60 Minutes that more than two doses of naloxone, a life-saving drug that can reverse opioid overdoses, might be necessary to save the life of someone who has overdosed on fentanyl. “60 Minutes” is the most successful television broadcast in history. Offering hard-hitting investigative reports, interviews, feature segments and profiles of people in the news, the broadcast began in 1968 and is still a hit, over 50 seasons later, regularly making Nielsen’s Top 10.
See the original video clip and read the article on the 60 Minutes website.
Fentanyl, which is often hidden in counterfeit pills, is fueling the worst drug crisis in U.S. history. Last year the synthetic opioid killed more than 70,000 Americans.
