Speeding car stopped by Kansas trooper was delivering a kilogram of fentanyl to Ohio

A citizen of Mexico has been sentenced to nearly six years in a U.S. prison after admitting he and a partner were caught trafficking drugs.

Jorge Eduardo Guerrero-Bustamante was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Wichita to 70 months in federal prison. He previously pleaded guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, court records show.

Bustamante admitted as part of his plea deal that he and co-defendant Ruby “Kimberly” Quiroz were taking nearly a kilogram of fentanyl from California to Ohio. The case against Quiroz is ongoing.

The pair were pulled over for speeding by a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper on Jan. 2, 2020, according to the plea agreement. At the time of the traffic stop, Quiroz was driving and Bustamante was a passenger. Neither of them had a driver’s license.

The driver refused to consent to a vehicle search, so the trooper brought out his K-9 for a drug sniff. Reggie the dog then alerted to the trunk area of the car. The trooper then searched the car and found about 994 grams of a substance that field-tested and was laboratory-confirmed as fentanyl.

Federal prosecutors have filed for the forfeiture of the 2015 Toyota Corolla, which is registered to an Alberto Mora Martinez Alberto of Bay Point, California.

Bustamante admitted during his interrogation that he and Quiroz were delivering the package from California to Ohio, and he knew it contained illegal narcotics. He was being paid $2,000 to make the delivery.

Depending on purity, a kilogram of fentanyl can yield enough fatal doses to kill half a million people, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Drug traffickers mix fentanyl with other drugs because of its relatively low cost and high potency. It is primarily smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico.

Bustamante is a Mexican citizen, and deportation or other immigration consequences would require a separate court proceeding. He was 27 years old when he signed his plea deal in April.

This story was originally published June 27, 2021 at 7:06 PM.