Rock Hill man gets 15 years in prison for shipping and selling fentanyl, feds say
A York County man who imported fentanyl drugs to the Carolinas that were sold as illegal pills from Charlotte to Myrtle Beach has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison, according to prosecutors and court documents.
Justin DeNeko Cunningham, 27, of Rock Hill, was sentenced in federal court in South Carolina after pleading guilty to conspiracy to possess fentanyl with intent to distribute, records show.
A drug trafficking ring shipped fentanyl from California to Rock Hill and Charlotte that was made into counterfeit Roxicodone pills that contained fentanyl, federal prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Carolina said in a statement and official court documents. Cunningham then sold the illegal pills in Rock Hill, North Carolina, and Myrtle Beach, prosecutors said.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid pain reliever that is 50-100 times more potent than morphine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2020 more than 93,000 people died of drug overdoses in the United States. That’s the largest number of drug-related deaths ever recorded in a year, according to the DEA.
Fentanyl, the synthetic opioid most commonly found in counterfeit pills, is the primary driver of the increase in overdose deaths, DEA officials said in a statement.
Cunningham was arrested in March 2019 after an investigation by federal agents from the FBI, ATF and DEA, and local law enforcement from the York County Multijurisdictional Drug Enforcement Unit, York County Sheriff’s Office, and Rock Hill Police Department, records show.
He has previous York County felony convictions for drugs from 2017, South Carolina court records show.
This story was originally published February 2, 2022 at 11:06 AM.
