PROVIDENCE – A judge has sentenced a Rhode Island man to serve 20 years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to operating an illicit drug lab in Pawtucket where law enforcement uncovered more than 16 kilograms of pills and powder – one of the largest seizures of fentanyl ever in the state, prosecutors said.
Jorge “Big Head” Pimentel, 36, of Cranston, was sentenced in Providence on Tuesday by US District Court Chief Judge John J. McConnell, Jr., and was ordered to serve five years of supervised release following his prison sentence, according to the Rhode Island US Attorney’s Office.
Pimentel pleaded guilty in December after he was indicted on charges of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute fentanyl, and possession with intent to distribute fentanyl.
According to prosecutors, no plea agreement was filed, but Pimental admitted he ran the “highly productive drug lab and stash house” raided by authorities on Sept. 23, 2023.
There, investigators found 53,000 pills containing fentanyl and nearly 9 kilograms of powder fentanyl, according to a sentencing memorandum filed in court on Monday. They also found an industrial grade pill press worth more than $10,000, pills containing the sedative Xylazine, and 28,000 grams of cutting agents used to manufacture the fentanyl pills, which were made to resemble pharmaceutical grade Percocet pills, prosecutors said.
Altogether, the discovery was “one of the largest seizures of fentanyl ever in this district,” Assistant US Attorney Stacey A. Erickson wrote in the memorandum.
“The drugs seized from him that day, were just the tip of the iceberg, a snapshot of the Defendant’s lengthy narcotics trafficking history,” Erickson wrote.
Indeed, Pimental was already a “well-established, large scale fentanyl trafficker” when he brokered sales multiple times between May 31 and Sept. 29, 2023, delivering approximately 34,000 fentanyl-laced pills in exchange for $37,000, prosecutors said.
The powder and already cut mixture seized that September was enough to produce more than 633,000 additional pills, officials said.
“It is rare for this court to preside over the case of an individual who possessed and intended to sell the quantity” Pimental did, Erickson wrote.
Pimental had been a “long-time target” for investigators, according to the memorandum.
“Simple math shows the number of pills, the potentially lethal pills, he was putting on the street,” Erickson wrote.
Court filings show Pimental had requested the court to consider a 10-year sentence.
In a letter to the judge, Pimental wrote he has grown to feel ashamed of himself. He is scared to know his son will grow up without him, he wrote.
“I can’t begin to explain the remorse and empathy I feel for my actions,” Pimental wrote.
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