An eight-month drug sting netted 110,000 pills laced with fentanyl, scores of long guns and handguns, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, body armor and even hand grenades, law enforcement officials from at least a dozen metro agencies announced Wednesday.

David Olesky, acting special agent for the Denver Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said the haul of fentanyl pills illustrated how prevalent the narcotic has become in Colorado. Agents seized four times more fentanyl in fiscal year 2021 than they did the previous fiscal year, he said.  

“People think this is happening somewhere else,” Olesky said, adding that an estimated 40 percent of fentanyl-laced pills are deadly. “One of the questions I get asked often is, ‘Why would these drug operations want to kill their customers?’ The answer is they don’t care if they kill you in the process.”

Colorado is on track to have 700 fentanyl-related deaths this year, 18^th Judicial District Attorney John Kellner said.

“The work of this team has potentially avoided over 40,000 deaths in our community,” he said.

A grand jury indicted 19 people who worked for a drug trafficking organization as couriers, transporters and distributors dealing in large quantities of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl. Officials said that 11 of the 19 are in custody and that since the indictments, two other people have been arrested in connection with the operation.

They said the profit margins are huge for fentanyl, with one pill costing 4 cents in Mexico, but rising up to $20 apiece once it’s sold on the street.

The drug operation was working out of several homes and apartments in Commerce City and Denver, according to the indictment. But the pills were distributed throughout the Front Range including Jefferson, Denver, Arapahoe and Douglas counties.

The indictment describes how DEA agents used wiretaps and surveillance as they worked undercover to buy narcotics in Target parking lots and followed drug dealers to a Safeway.

Olesky said the fentanyl epidemic has hit all communities regardless of race, age and financial status. He added that none of it is being manufactured in Colorado: “They were 100% manufactured south of the border.” 

According to the indictment, the ringleader of the drug operation was Saul Ramon Rivera-Beltran, 30, who coordinated the drug shipments and deals from Mexico. Rivera-Beltran is being held on $1 million bond.

The suspects who were indicted will be prosecuted in Douglas County.

“This organization and its members had no regard for the impact their activities had on our community,” Olesky said. “It was all about greed and making money.”