A Wilkinsburg man faces four years behind bars for conspiring to sell heroin and fentanyl after officials caught his drug-dealing crew operating out of a Monroeville hotel, federal prosecutors in Pittsburgh said Tuesday.
Termane Thomass Eleam, 33, was sentenced this week after pleading guilty in October, U.S. Attorney Scott W. Brady said.
He’s the third person to be sentenced in the drug ring case.
On Nov. 3, 2016, police executed a search warrant for two specific rooms at the Days Inn in Monroeville.
While searching one room, investigators found two men, Wilfredo Torres and Donte Spence, a substance they suspected was heroin, gloves, packaging materials, blenders, several cellphones and more than $4,000 in cash.
Spence further swept fentanyl powder on a desk into the air when officials entered the room, sending several police and agents to the hospital, prosecutors said. The drug didn’t have lasting effects.
In the second room, officials found a cousin of Eleam bagging what they believed was heroin.
The drugs from both hotel rooms later tested positive for about 200 grams of heroin and furanyl fentanyl, an analogue of fentanyl, prosecutors said.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid painkiller that can be 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin. As little as 2 or 3 nanograms per milliliter of blood of fentanyl can be deadly.
Eleam, who had left the Days Inn shortly before officials arrived, returned to the hotel during the search, prosecutors said. They searched him and his car and found marijuana and drug paraphernalia.
U.S. District Judge Nora Barry Fischer ordered Eleam to spend three years on probation after completing his four-year prison sentence.
Torres received a 20-year prison sentence and Spence, of Allentown, was sentenced to three years in prison.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Shanicka L. Kennedy prosecuted the case with help from Homeland Security and state and Monroeville police.
