Orange County man sentenced to 20 years in prison for fentanyl distribution leading to two deaths
An Orange County man was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on Friday after he was found guilty of distributing fentanyl that led to the overdose deaths of two people in 2021.
Laguna Hills resident Jason Amin Soheili, 28, was sentenced on Friday after pleading guilty in December 2022 for two counts of distribution of fentanyl resulting in the death of two people — one in Aliso Viejo and the other in Utah.
An investigation revealed that in both January and February of 2021, just months before Soheili was taken into custody, he exchanged text messages with the Utah victim regarding a shipment of fentanyl pills, where the victim directed Soehili to send a package to an address in Fillmore, Utah.
Soheili shipped the package, which contained two counterfeit oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl, on February 15, 2021. The package arrived three days after and the victim ingested at least one of the pills on Feb. 21 and died of fentanyl toxicity, according to the United States Department of Justice.
Again, on April 1, 2021, Soehili exchanged text messages with a separate victim, which referenced the sale of cocaine and alprazolam, or Xanax, to the victim. The two are said to have met later that evening, when the sale occurred at Soehili's Laguna Hills home. At some point that evening, the victim ingested the narcotics and died the next day from acute fentanyl, alprazolam and cocaine intoxication, a press release said.
In a letter to the court, Soheili apologized to the families of the victims for his "selfishness and irresponsibility ... I've made huge mistakes."
