Two men face multiple felony drug charges following searches of Adams County apartments and the seizure of what authorities said were an estimated 67,000 fentanyl pills, 521 grams of methamphetamine, 45 grams heroin and 667 grams of cocaine.
Oscar Serrano Romano and Enrique Delgadillo Ruiz were arrested Dec. 18.
As part of the investigation, the Northern Colorado Drug Task Force and the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Front Range Task Force executed search warrants for apartments in Thornton, Aurora and Westminster. During the search of the Thornton apartment, officers found several duffel bags containing bundled packages of suspected methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl, according to an affidavit from the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.
Officers reported finding bags they believed were being used to distribute drugs. They also found a parking pass for an apartment in Thornton where Ruiz was staying, according to the affidavit.
Investigators obtained a search warrant for the second apartment on Dec. 18. They said they found a duffel bag containing suspected counterfeit fentanyl pills, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin. Officers also found clear bags of suspected cocaine, an undetermined amount of money and a notebook that appeared to be handwritten daily logs of drug sales.
Before searching the apartment, officers arrested Romano on a traffic stop after he left the building and got in his car. Officers said they found a white, powdery substance in his car’s console. Ruiz was stopped and arrested while driving away a few minutes later.
Both suspects face charges that include possession with intent to manufacture or distribute a controlled substance and conspiracy to manufacture or distribute a controlled substance.
The pair scheduled to appear Tuesday afternoon in Adams County District Court.
BOSTON — Massachusetts corrections officials say they’re making progress curbing the amount of illegal drugs being smuggled into the state’s prisons.
A report released Wednesday by the Massachusetts Department of Correction said a multiagency task force created to intercept contraband in state correctional facilities investigated 26 cases that led to arrests and the seizure of millions of dollars worth of synthetic cannabis, heroin and opioids.
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A Border Patrol SUV. (File photo courtesy of OnScene.TV
Border Patrol agents stopped a vehicle this week that contained nearly 17 pounds of fentanyl, authorities said, and took the driver into custody.
It’s the latest drug seizure in the agency’s San Diego Sector, where agents have confiscated 184 pounds of narcotics since Dec. 4.
Agents from the San Clemente Station on Tuesday conducted a vehicle stop on northbound Interstate 5, the Border Patrol said in a news release. A search under the front seats uncovered seven packages of fentanyl weighing 16.75 pounds, which had an estimated street value of $64,600.
In three other cases this month out of the San Clemente Station, agents made I-5 stops and seized more fentanyl –12.24 pounds, with an estimated street value of $47,175; 25.79 pounds, valued at $99,450 and 23.48 pounds, valued at $90,525.
In the second incident, they also found 31 pounds of heroin.
In an additional stop, in Murrieta, agents searched a vehicle on Interstate 15 and discovered 75 pounds of drugs, including methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl.
In each case, authorities took the driver into custody. Three are U.S. citizens, one is a permanent legal resident and another, a Mexican citizen.
“The significant quantity of fentanyl and other dangerous narcotics that our agents have seized in the past two weeks represents millions of lethal doses,” said San Diego Sector Chief Patrol Agent Justin De La Torre. “Whether it is shutting down human traffickers or preventing deadly drugs from entering our country, border security saves lives.”
The mysterious death of a Google executive and his last night with an exotic beauty captured on video — now a court decides her fate. “48 Hours” correspondent Maureen Maher reports.
This story previously aired July 30, 2016. It was updated on Aug. 30, 2025.
When he’s not out looking for the big wave, there’s a big story that has consumed Stephen Baxter, a reporter for the Santa Cruz Sentinel and a “48 Hours” consultant: the mysterious death of Google executive Forrest Hayes at the city’s sprawling marina.
Forrest Hayes
Forrest Hayes Memorial Site
“Forrest Hayes was … 51 years old. He lived in a pretty upper crust neighborhood,” Baxter told “48 Hours.” “He was a pretty high-powered guy and … obviously had a lot of assets; he lives in a $3 million house in Santa Cruz.”
In 2013, one of the boats docked in Santa Cruz Harbor was the majestic 46-foot-long yacht called “Escape.” It belonged to Hayes. Not surprisingly, the tech exec outfitted his boat with some of the most expensive tech gear out there — about $200,000 worth, including a sophisticated security system complete with high-def cameras.
Inside, Hayes spared no expense on creature comforts, including a leather ceiling and a $8,000 captain’s chair.
The Google executive’s death caught the attention of Michael Daly, an investigative reporter for The Daily Beast, in New York, and also a “48 Hours” consultant.
“I think … he was practical and imaginative at the same time,” Daly said. “Forrest Hayes started in his native Michigan … at the Ford Motor Company as a manager, he went to California for Sun Microsystems and he went on to Apple …”
Hayes then went on to Google for a high-paying job at their top-secret location, where impossible dreams are transformed into reality.
“He was hired … to work in Google X, which they call their ‘moonshot factory.’ As in, you know, the most extreme, wildest, imaginative, farthest reaching ideas they could have. You know, like Google glasses, self-driving cars,” Daly explained. “He was the guy who was actually gonna make some of these things happen.”
It’s a place so secretive, colleagues from Google X refused to divulge exactly what Hayes did there. To get away from the pressures at work, Forrest Hayes would head to the marina, and onto his prized possession.
“One of the larger boats in the harbor, I think that’s fair to say,” said Baxter.
What police would eventually discover was that the married father of five had a secret liaison. She was a young and exotic dark haired woman covered with very distinctive tattoos. And she would be the last person to see Forrest Hayes alive.
“On the night of November 22, 2013 … Forrest Hayes was on his yacht … and he didn’t come home that night. And his wife became concerned. She called the captain they retained for this yacht and he went and he got on the boat,” said Daly.
Hayes’ body was found lying in the main cabin. The captain immediately called 911, but surprisingly, it would take months before the Google executive’s death made headlines.
“There was — really no report of his death,” Baxter said. “Obviously, the police in this case were trying to keep that under wraps as they investigated.”
Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark has been on this case since day one.
“The media’s gonna want to know right off the bat. ‘Who is it?’ ‘Who’s responsible?’ ‘Is this a homicide?’ ‘Is this a murder?’ We didn’t have enough to really even put that out. We were busy building the case,” Clark told “48 Hours” correspondent Maureen Maher.
Building the case wasn’t easy despite some initial crime scene clues.
“There were two wine glasses there, both which appeared to have been used,” said Clark
Investigators zeroed in on Hayes’ cellphone, launching an exhaustive digital search. They made a stunning discovery. Hayes had a profile page on a dating website, called SeekingArrangement.com. It would be a critical clue in learning the identity of that mystery tattooed woman.
It was just a few days before Thanksgiving 2013. What happened that night was recorded by the boat’s video cameras. One camera in particular caught the very last moments of Hayes’ life in chilling detail.
“Initially, we were told that the video wasn’t available from that particular camera that actually showed the cabin of the boat. … there was indeed video that was uploaded to a cloud server. And the video from that camera was indeed available,” Clark explained. “That was one of those moments where you feel like, you know, it was 4th and 1. And you got a first down.
Actually, it took three months and a court order for detectives to get their hands on that video. When they did, it was explosive.
“That video was shocking to me,” said Clark.
“What do you see on this video?” Maher asked.
“Well, the video’s everything. The video is the case,” Clark replied.
Police have yet to release the video, but described in detail to “48 Hours” exactly what they say happened that night between the couple: essentially, it was a party for two — drugs included.
“They greet each other — a quick hug — just a quick embrace. You can see that they’re engaged in conversation. But there’s no audio,” Clark said. “… then, eventually, she — gets to the point where she starts to prepare drugs … for injection. We see her very clearly. She brought all of the equipment with her. She brought the drugs with her.”
As police would learn, the drug of choice that night was heroin.
“We see her prepare the syringe. We see her it looks like she’s injecting herself, but her back’s to the camera,” Clark explained. “He watches this happen. And then she eventually injects him.”
“Do you feel like, at any point when you’re watching the video, that this is a guy who is afraid and doesn’t want to do this?” Maher asked.
“I get the impression … he’s nervous. He’s uncertain. But he’s going along with it,” said Clark.
“And what happens then?” Maher asked.
“Almost immediately, he starts to go into distress,” Clark explained. “At some point, she comes to him. It looks like she tries to revive him a bit … by patting him on the face and talking to him, holding his head as he slumped forward on the chair.
“And you or I, if we found ourselves in that situation, would’ve been on the phone to 911, sayin’, ‘Oh, my gosh. Something terrible’s happened. We need help.’ And she does none of that,” Clark continued.
Instead, Clark says the video shows the woman trying to remove any evidence that she was ever there — wiping fingerprints and cleaning up her drug paraphernalia.
“While he’s slumped over on the floor?” Maker asked.
“While he’s on the floor,” Clark replied.
“She’s stepping over him?” Maher asked.
“She is literally walking around the cabin of the boat … stepping over him, grabbing her glass of wine, carrying it around the boat cabin with her,” said Clark.
Clark says that portion of the video with Hayes on the floor of the cabin goes on for seven minutes.
“And that’s seven minutes that emergency medical personnel could’ve been there could have done something and could have reacted to this situation to save Mr. Hayes’ life. But instead, she does nothing, nothing to call for help or to fix this. You know, and that’s the crux of the case,” Clark told Maher.
Alix Tichelman
diaz digital media
Armed with that video, police hit pay dirt. They were able to match the woman with those distinctive tattoos to a profile on the dating website Hayes had used. She was a 26-year-old aspiring model. Her name? Alix Tichelman.
WEB OF SECRETS
The wealthy Google executive found the exotic model in a somewhat secret world, where real names are rarely used.
Technically, Alix Tichelman and Forrest Hayes met in Las Vegas — not at an upscale casino or one of the fancy hotel lobby bars — but through an online website which is headquartered just a stone’s throw from the strip. But as “48 Hours” discovered, it’s not your typical dating website.
“What year did you start SeekingArrangement?” Maher asked the site’s CEO Brandon Wade.
“It was started in 2006 from a bedroom in San Francisco, actually,” he replied.
It may have the look and feel of a start-up, but with nearly four million members worldwide, this is big business.
“SeekingArrangement.com is — a sugar daddy dating website, so we match wealthy guys and girls looking to pamper and spoil. And, of course, younger men and women looking to meet those wealthy people,” Wade explained.
Wade, a boyish 43-year old, says he’s become a multi-millionaire from all the “arranging” he’s been doing.
“Is SeekingArrangement about arranging sexual relationships for money?” Maher asked.
“It is about finding romance and passion,” Wade replied. “I’m unapologetic about the fact that sex is involved in a romantic relationship. And money is involved in a romantic relationship. But that doesn’t make the romantic relationship prostitution.”
Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark, the point man in the Hayes death case, strongly disagrees.
“It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to take a look at that website and figure out exactly what was going on there,” he told Maher. “The titles of the individuals are Sugar Babies and Sugar Daddies. You know, that’s — there’s no innocent connotation there behind any of that.”
“What is ‘Budget’? That’s what he’s willing to spend?” Maher asked Wade as they looked at the website.
“That’s his sort of lifestyle. So it could be going out for dinners, paying for that. Going on trips,” he explained.
“OK. So does a woman think you’re gonna spend $3,000 on me? A Sugar Baby thinks, ‘You’re gonna spend — $3,000 on me,'” Maher asked.
“Yeah, on the relationship,” Wade replied.
Wade is proud that his membership ranks include employees of leading Fortune 500 companies, including, he says, from Google.
“Is Forrest Hayes a typical client?” Maher asked Wade.
“I would say he is — an average client of ours,” he replied.
“Married tech executive looking for some sort of arrangement,” Maher commented.
“Yep. Forty percent of the guys are married,” said Wade.
It’s unknown if Hayes was fulfilling the “expectations” of any Sugar Babies’ lifestyle requests, which range from a $1,000 to over $10,000 in monthly Sugar Daddy “gifts.”
“Can you tell us anything about Alix Tichelman’s profile on SeekingArrangement?” Maher asked Wade.
“Well, the only thing I can say is that it looked like any other normal profile, so it was approved. And — there was no indication that she was soliciting money for sex. At least not with that profile,” he replied.
After Hayes’death, investigators began tracking Alix Tichelman on social media. Fearing she might leave town, they hatched a plan to catch her using SeekingArrangement.com.
“When she posted on Facebook something to the effect of — I plan to go back to Georgia — that’s when they decided to really go in and pursue her on the same website, just the way Forrest had, and pose as a john and lure her back to Santa Cruz,” reporter Stephen Baxter explained.
“We started seeing chatter from her that indicated she was either gonna move out of the country or out of the state,” said Clark.
“There’s now a clock on this ’cause she’s about to head South,” reporter Michael Daly explained. “So, they do kind of a classic sting.”
“We sold out our detective and made him set up a profile — under a different identity and made up a whole story about him. We then posted that out there and we reached out to Alix Tichelman through SeekingArrangements,” said Clark.
Code-named “Sebastian,” that detective began emailing and texting with Tichelman, hoping for a rendezvous.
“Eventually, we convinced her to come down and meet with us for an agreed-upon … arrangement for sex, for prostitution, and for a sum of money,” said Clark.
“Police said … they deposited some money — several hundred dollars into her bank account with a promise of … at least $1,000 upon arrival and everything else,” Baxter explained.
“This did not appear to you that this was the first time she had negotiated such a situation?” Maher asked Clark.
“No. In fact … she kinda called us out, called us a cheapskate. Told us that, you know, many of her clients pay twice that,” he replied.
Eight months after the death of Forrest Hayes, Alix Tichelman once again showed up in Santa Cruz County, this time at a secluded resort. Once again, she came with heroin in her bag expecting to hook up with the Sugar Daddy from SeekingArrangement. And once again, it did not go as planned.
“When you said, ‘We’re the cops. And we’re the ones you’ve been communicating with,’ what was her reaction?” Maher asked Clark.
“Oh, she — she cried,” he replied. “… that’s when we saw panic.”
Alix Tichelman booking photo
Santa Cruz Police Dept.
Alix Tichelman, 26, was stunned. Police arrested her for prostitution and charged her in the death of Forrest Hayes.
“…this was a crime. This wasn’t just some accident gone awry,” Clark said.
Or was it? What happened that night, says Tichelman’s defenders, is a lot more complicated.
WHO IS ALIX TICHELMAN?
Perhaps no one was more surprised by the arrest of AlixTichelman than Chad Cornell. The construction worker with a passion for writing and playing music was in love with her.
“For me, I mean, she was somebody completely different,” Cornell told Maureen Maher. “When I first saw her, I couldn’t help but to say something … She has a very darker style. And I always thought she was really beautiful. And almost like, you know, the Angelina Jolie kinda look.”
Alix Tichelman and Chad Cornell
Cornell had no idea how dark her life really was.
“Did you believe she was falling in love with you?” Maher asked Cornell.
“I did,” he replied.
Cornell thought his girlfriend was a model — there were countless images, a swimsuit commercial, and a makeup tutorial she did online.
And as far as he could tell, she was always answering modeling calls.
“She’d get all dolled up and go to a photo shoot,” Cornell said. “…she’d usually make about $1,000 or so when she’d go out to these modeling shoots.”
So imagine how he felt to learn months later that his beloved girlfriend was now being accused of doing something altogether different for all that money.
“I got a text with the news link on it … and kind just fell over on the couch in shock,” Cornell said.
The woman he once thought he’d spend the rest of his life with was now not only charged with prostitution — but also in the death of Google executive Forrest Hayes.
“What are you thinking? This is a woman you were in love with,” Maher commented.
“Yeah, I mean obviously, I was devastated you know. I turned white,” said Cornell.
As the news sank in, to his complete amazement, Cornell realized that just hours before Alix Tichelman met up with Forrest Hayes on that fateful night, she was with him.
“We were hanging out that day actually. She told me that some of her long-time high school friends were in Santa Cruz, and had a boat and she had planned to go hang out with them,” he explained. “Later that night, she actually woke me outta bed with a phone call. She’s you know really frantic on the phone. She sounded very upset.”
“What was she talking about?” Maher asked.
“She talked about how her friends had started doing heroin and a bunch of hardcore drugs on the boat and made her uncomfortable. And that she had to leave,” Cornell replied.
“But you believed on that call that she sounded genuinely upset?” Maher asked.
“Crying, sniffling. I mean upset upset,” said Cornell.
Because the truth, he now knows, was much worse. And it’s left him wondering whether he ever really knew who Alix was.
“Who is Alix Tichelman, right? Who is she?” said reporter Michael Daly.
Daly did what police investigators did, and using the tools of Hayes’ employer, he ‘Googled’ her.
“This, the police discovered, was Alix Tichelman’s Twitter account,” he explained, navigating through the profile AKKennedyxx.
“One x short of triple x,” Daly said of her Twitter handle. ‘Baddest bitch, model, stylist, hustler, exotic dancer.’ Those are her words. These are the pictures to go with the words.”
Twitter
“This has the charming inscription, ‘To death do us part,” Daly said of a photo Tichelman showing off a tattoo on her arm that was posted to the account. “You might start believing less in coincidence on seeing that.”
But to Daly, Tichelman’s postings looked more like someone trying to create an image rather than someone obsessed with killing. That’s because he came across this post:
“My beautiful mother and I out for lunch. *no makeup face*”
“I mean this is a young woman who wants to be with mom,” Daly commented of the tweet, which included a photo of Tichelman and her mother smiling.
Tichelman posted it just months before her arrest for Forrest’s death
“It makes you think there’s a fuller story,” said Daly.
So how did it come to this? Childhood pictures show a cute blonde tomboy who appeared to have all the advantages in life growing up with her sister, Monica, who would become an investment counselor, her mother, Leslie Ann, and her father, Bart, a CEO for a technology company and a pretty good poker player.
“And he at one point found himself playing with some of the best poker players in the world and he won like $400,000,” said Daly.
Alix Tichelman spent her early teens in an Atlanta suburb where she played sports and won writing awards.
“Her friends say that she’s very smart, very deep,” said Daly.
But also very troubled.
“Her experiences with boys were not always happy ones,” Daly explained. “She had eating disorders … she was taking drugs.”
Desperate, her parents went looking for help and located a school that they thought would give her special attention.
“So they found this place called the Hyde School in Maine,” Daly continued.
Megan was also a student at the Hyde School, where Tichelman spent a few months.
“I can feel, like, pressure in my chest. It’s nerve-wracking,” she said driving to the school.
Megan asked “48 Hours” not to use her last name, but agreed to travel back to the Hyde School campus.
“I want people to see this very pivotal part of her life, that I feel, probably affected her at a very … huge point in her development … and why she is who she is,” she said.
“Do you remember when you first met Alix, do you happen to remember the very first time you saw her?” Maher asked.
“One-hundred percent,” Megan said. “She was gorgeous and she was very awkward.”
The cute blonde girl next door was long gone.
“She barely ate. She was very skinny. She was rail-thin,” Megan said. “She was emotionally kind of closed off.”
“I think the big question then is why? What had happened to her?” Maher asked.
“I don’t know the truth to that. She never told me there was a specific catalyst,” Megan replied.
But Megan says Alix Tichelman did hint at some traumatic events.
“We talked about … the fact that we had issues trusting men,” she said. “We had become numb to a lot of things.”
Tichelman had started cutting herself. A photo of Alix in her then-bunkmate’s scrapbook reads “psycho roomie” and “look at the cuts on her arm.”
“Alix Tichelman was actually the first person that I met who did that,” said Ashley Kent, who lived in Tichelman’s dorm. “She came to the school with the scars. She had already etched things into her arm, and she had already made this … image of herself as this like devil person … that’s how she dressed, kind of like a devil worshipper.”
But was that really who Alix was?
“She was actually a really nice girl. It was very much like a front that she putting on, an image,” said Kent.
Megan noticed it, too.
“Once you bypass those walls, she was just a normal girl who was scared,” she noted.
“And what was she scared of?” Maher asked.
“I think herself, honestly. I mean we didn’t know who we were. We had resorted to things that not every person chooses. We had been in trouble.
And at Hyde, it seemed like Tichelman was always in trouble. Megan says they punished her.
“You’re forced to do manual labor, physical labor. They basically tell you what you can and can’t do,” Megan explained.
Megan says she and Alix were forced to build a road.
“We hoed it, each person, and we weeded it. And then they made us cart like wheelbarrows — like huge wheelbarrows full of rocks up and spread ’em, so we basically built a dirt road on campus,” she said.
Ashley Kent remembers one night waking up to Alix screaming. What happened sounds like a scene out of a Stephen King movie.
“She like kinda walked down the halls and like was cutting herself really late at night,” she said.
“She began just to hurt herself because she felt that’s what she deserved,” said Megan.
When it didn’t work out at Hyde, Tichelman’s parents tried other schools. But the worse was still to come.
“Well, she talked about taking heroin when she was in her teens,” said Daly.
And by her early 20s, Tichelman was living in San Francisco, working strip clubs like Larry Flint’s Hustler, and then a place called the Condor. Eventually, she found her way back home to Atlanta, where her life would take a dramatic turn.
“This kinda great thing happens. She meets a guy named Dean,” said Daly.
Alix Tichelman and Dean Riopelle
Dean Riopelle was much older but so in love with Alix Tichelman he wanted to marry her.
“So maybe there’s gonna be a happy ending anyway,” Daly commented.
Then, in September of 2013, two months before Forrest Hayes died, Tichelman’s fiancé, Dean Riopelle, died with heroin in his system:
911 CALL: Um, I don’t know I think my boyfriend overdosed or something like he … he won’t respond, and he’s just laying on the ground. Oh no.
Was it an unfortunate coincidence? Or something more sinister?
ANOTHER HEROIN DEATH
The Masquerade — it’s one of the hottest concert venues in Atlanta, Georgia, and it all belonged to 53-year-old Dean Riopelle, a former cross dressing singer for the rock band the “Impotent Sea Snakes.”
In September of 2013, Riopelle died of a heroin overdose. His girlfriend at the time: Alix Tichelman.
Tichelman called 911 after she says she discovered Riopelle unconscious in his North Atlanta home. That was just two months before she was with Google exec Forrest Hayes when he died.
“We were surprised the similarities in their case to our case,” said Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark.
Based on Tichelman’s arrest in Santa Cruz for the death of Forrest Hayes, police in Milton, Georgia, are now taking a second look at Riopelle’s death. What was first ruled an accidental overdose might very well become a criminal matter.
One person who believes Tichelman should be held responsible for Riopelle’s death is his former employee, Khristina Brucker.
“I think she had something to do with his death, I really do,” said Brucker.
For a few months in 2012, Brucker, an aspiring model, lived in Riopelle’s house, taking care of his children from his previous marriage and his pet hobby: raising dozens of monkeys.
“He said he had a dream about monkeys one day and he just started collecting them. He had the money. So why not?” Brucker told Maureen Maher.
Riopelle told an Atlanta TV station he had hopes of turning his property into a zoo.
“Anybody would spend 20 minutes or an hour with one would see they have a little bit more personality than most other animals,” he said.
But Brucker says his real passion was the woman also featured in that news story, Riopelle’s live-in girlfriend, Alix Tichelman.
“Oh, he loved her. He absolutely loved her. He wanted to marry her and she wanted to marry him, too,” said Brucker.
Dean Riopelle loved everything about Alix Tichelman — except the drugs. By the time Tichelman hooked up with Riopelle, she was a full blown heroin addict. Brucker says Riopelle didn’t share Tichelman’s bad habits.
“Did you ever see him drink?” Maher asked.
“Never,” Brucker replied.
“Smoke?”
“Never.”
“Do drugs?” Maher pressed.
“Not once,” said Brucker.
Brucker stopped working for Riopelle almost a year before he died. Still, she’s sure he would never inject himself with heroin. But she wonders if Alix Tichelman might have.
“Do you think that’s what happened?” Maher asked Brucker.
“I think it’s possible, especially with the case in Santa Cruz where she actually did that,” she replied.
“The idea that she’s going around randomly sticking people with heroin needles is preposterous. These are grown men. They know exactly what they’re doing,” said Todd, an Atlanta businessman.
Todd asked “48 Hours” not to use his last name, but says, as a close friend of Alix Tichelman, he could no longer keep quiet about what he knows about the couple.
“She was devastated after Dean passed away,” he said.
Todd says, not only did Riopelle drink — he drank a lot.
“But she loved him and he loved her. If he were alive today, he would be the first one to bail her out of jail,” he said. “And he would be absolutely mortified at how the people around him … have treated her.”
And Todd says Riopelle was determined to get Tichelman off heroin. He sent her to rehab and even bought her an engagement ring. He texted Todd.
“This is August 30th of 2013 … he was getting Alix a wedding ring. They were going to get married,” Todd said of the text.
That’s just three weeks before Dean Riopelle would overdose.
“She gets her ring, she picked it out today. We drug test every week. If she can stay clean for 14 months we will get married Halloween night 2014…” Todd said, reading aloud one of the text messages that have never been made public. He showed them exclusively to “48 Hours.”
“Alix says this is the first time in 10 years she has gotten out of detox or rehab and lasted a whole week before shooting up again,” Todd said, reading another text.
But Tichelman didn’t stay clean for long. On Sept. 7, 2013, just 10 days before his fatal overdose, Dean Riopelle made a shocking discovery: Alix was online, advertising herself to men.
“She hated that she was compelled to do it because she had this addiction,” Todd said. “There were guys who wanted to rent her penthouse apartments … men with a lot of power and a lot of status. …But she wasn’t interested in anything except getting the money to support her habit. She loved Dean, she wanted to be with Dean, but she had this deep dark secret.”
And, Todd says, when Riopelle found out, he flipped out.
“He said, ‘Can I move all of the prostitute’s s— into your place tomorrow … She is better over there and I would like to bring her stuff to you today so I don’t have to see the whore again,'” Todd said, reading Riopelle’s text.
But Riopelle didn’t kick Tichelman out. Instead, Todd says, he hit the bottle — hard.
“Once he discovered the ad things began to fall apart. Dean desperately loved her. Dean wanted to keep her. But he couldn’t figure out how to reconcile all of this,” said Todd.
So, Todd believes, Riopelle tried something new.
Tichelman would later tell police she was in the bathroom when she heard what sounded like a crash. She went to the bedroom and found Riopelle on the floor.
An autopsy would show he had a fatal mix of heroin, pain killers and alcohol in his system.
“I’m convinced that what happened was Dean was trying to reach a connection with Alix on a deeper level. And he thought that if they could share this thing, this thing she was so attached to, that she couldn’t let go of no matter what, that they could actually be together. And that’s what he wanted more than anything in life,” said Todd.
Following Riopelle’s death, Tichelman sent text messages to Todd: “Gd why did dean have to die?”
In the texts she writes that her mother is coming and will move her to California to the family’s new home two hours outside San Francisco. But Tichelman is trying to detox and tells Todd she is worried:
“I know that city well, like the Tenderloin where I used to live is the third biggest open drug market in the U.S. It takes two minutes to score and you don’t have to know anyone. You can see why I’m worried,” Todd said, reading the text aloud.
Around Oct. 30, 2013, Alix Tichelman arrived in California. She immediately went back online and started advertising herself. Texting Todd: “Guys out here got mad money.”
And within days she had a prospect. She was about to come into serious cash.
“This is on the second of November and she says an ‘amazing guy’ found her…’He is the real deal.’ Tomorrow she’s going on his boat and for a few hours he’s giving her $400 to $500 cash. Then a check for $2,000,” Todd said of another text. “Now, I’m relatively certain that the guy on the boat she’s referring to was Forrest.”
Three weeks later, on Nov. 22, Alix Tichelman was definitely with Forrest Hayes on his boat, where Todd believes she was simply making money to feed her addiction.
“Tell me one thing that happened on that yacht that was not absolutely consensual between two adults,” Todd said. “Nothing.”
STUNNING DEVELOPMENTS
On May 19, 2015, Alix Tichelman is back in court to have a date set for her trial.
She’s been in jail for almost a year — her past modeling life a distant memory. Tichelman faces almost 20 years behind bars, charged in the killing of Forrest Hayes, along with drug possession and prostitution.
Her public defenders, Jerry Christensen and Larry Biggam, have insisted she is not a cold-blooded killer.
“Alix Tichelman did nothing that Mr. Hayes didn’t want her to do. Two adults engaged in mutual and cooperative drug usage. And it went wrong. But it was an accident,” Biggam told reporters.
Defense lawyers say Hayes was an eager participant that night, even using his own cell phone light to show Tichelman where to inject him. And they are adamant she then simply panicked.
“This video will show that it’s an accident. Everything about this video indicates accident and panic, everything about it,” Christensen told reporters.
For months they’ve investigated Forrest Hayes’ past, asking prosecutors to hand over video from the “Escape’s” cameras as far back as six months before he died.
“We have some indications from other material that there may have been previous encounters on the boat. It would be highly relevant in regard to whether or not there is — drug usage along with sex,” Christensen told reporters.
Judge: Do you understand that when you plead no contest or guilty you’re getting two felonies and five misdemeanors?
Alix Tichelman: Yes
Alix Tichelman in court on May 19, 2015.
“48 Hours”
And through her lawyer, she apologizes to the Hayes family: “It was accident and panic and she’s so, so sorry for it.”
Tichelman was sentenced to six years in a local jail, but with credit for her time served and a reduction by the judge, she’ll likely serve just a little over two years.
After the hearing, there was another stunning development. Prosecutor Rafael Vasquez says the family of Forrest Hayes told him they never wanted Alix Tichelman charged.
“The family did not want this case to be filed, they would have been very happy if this case had been dismissed,” Vasquez explained. “They were terrified about the prospect of this case going to trial.”
The family, he said, did not want that video from Hayes’ boat to ever be made public.
“I can only imagine what further pain, what further humiliation they would endure if that video was released out into the public,” said Vasquez.
What’s more, he says Alix was never a cold-blooded killer, as described by law enforcement.
“That was never depicted in that surveillance video,” said Vasquez.
In fact, the prosecutor agrees with the defense attorneys that Alix was anything but callous when Forrest collapsed.
“And the fact that she made some effort to wake him up, hit him in the chest, smack him in the face, holding him up trying to lift him up, then holding him, hugging him at one point, and then you can see her crying in one instance, and then yelling for him to wake up in one instance — that clearly showed somebody who appeared concerned at that time. And that is certainly inconsistent with somebody who acted with an obvious intent to kill,” he explained.
But, the prosecutor says, what she is guilty of is not doing enough.
“She was the only one who could have rendered help and she neglected to do so, she failed to do so and instead took liberties to destroy evidence and to make her getaway while leaving the man there to die,” said Vasquez.
In the end, one of Tichelman’s attorneys, Athena Reis, says her time in jail has been helping turn Alix’s life around.
“You know, she’s clean and sober. She’s closer with her family than ever, and I think she’s really used this time to reflect,” said Reis.
But for Forrest Hayes’ family , there is no turning around. And they’ll try to put the scars of his actions behind them.
“From this point on, the family no longer has to worry about the concern associated with all the scrutiny, all the ridicule and all the scorn generated by all the media attention in this case,” Vasquez said. “This family has been through a lot.”
Todd, one of Tichelman’ s closest friends, reveals never-before-made-public text messages between the two. He tells “48 Hours” why Tichelman arranged to meet another “sugar daddy” on an online dating site and why that meeting did not go as she planned.
Former Mexican cartel kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada pleaded guilty Monday to U.S. drug trafficking charges, saying he was sorry for helping to flood the U.S. with cocaine, heroin and other illicit substances and for fueling deadly violence in Mexico.“I recognize the great harm illegal drugs have done to the people of the United States, of Mexico, and elsewhere,” he said through a Spanish-language interpreter. “I take responsibility for my role in all of it and I apologize to everyone who has suffered or been affected by my actions.”Under the leadership of Zambada and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Sinaloa cartel evolved from a regional player into the largest drug trafficking organization in the world, prosecutors say.“Culpable,” Zambada said, using the Spanish word for “guilty,” as he entered his plea.He acknowledged the extent of the Sinaloa operation, including underlings who built relationships with cocaine producers in Colombia, oversaw the importation of cocaine to Mexico by boat and plane and the smuggling of the drug across the U.S.-Mexico border. He acknowledged that people working for him paid bribes to Mexican police and military commanders “so they could operate freely,” going all the way back to when the cartel was just starting out.Zambada was arrested in Texas last year. He entered his plea two weeks after prosecutors said they wouldn’t seek the death penalty against him, a development that his attorney has called an important step in resolving the case.The lawyer, Frank Perez, said outside court Monday that “the outcome was good,” adding that Zambada “wanted to accept responsibility, and he did.”Zambada, 77, is due to be sentenced Jan. 13 to life in prison.He traced his involvement in the illegal drug business to his teenage years, when — after leaving school with a sixth-grade education — he planted marijuana for the first time in 1969. He said he went on to sell heroin and other drugs, but especially cocaine. From 1980 until last year, he and his cartel were responsible for transporting at least 1.5 million kilograms of cocaine, “most of which went to the United States,” he said.Prosecutors said in his indictment that he and the cartel also trafficked in fentanyl and methamphetamine.Considered a good negotiator, Zambada was seen as the cartel’s strategist and dealmaker who was more involved in its day-to-day doings than the more flamboyant Guzmán. Nevertheless, prosecutors have said Zambada also was enmeshed in the group’s violence, at one point ordering the murder of his own nephew.Zambada pleaded guilty to charges of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise between 1989 and 2024 and racketeering conspiracy, which encompasses involvement in a number of crimes from 2000 to 2012.Prosecutors say he presided over a violent, highly militarized cartel with a private security force armed with powerful weapons and a cadre of “sicarios,” or hitmen, that carried out assassinations, kidnappings and torture. He acknowledged in his plea that he “directed people under my control to kill others” to serve the cartel’s interests.“Many innocent people were also killed,” he said in an eight-minute address to the court Monday.Zambada appeared momentarily unsteady as he arrived in a Brooklyn federal courtroom; a marshal grabbed his arm to direct him to his seat among his attorneys at the defense table.As Judge Brian M. Cogan described the charges in Zambada’s plea agreement, the bearded ex-Sinaloa boss sat attentively, at times brushing his right hand through his white hair.Guzmán was sentenced to life behind bars following his conviction in the same federal court in Brooklyn in 2019.The Sinaloa cartel is Mexico’s oldest criminal group, with various incarnations dating to the 1970s. It is a drug trafficking power player: A former Mexican cabinet member was convicted of taking bribes to help the cartel.U.S. law enforcement sought Zambada for more than two decades, but he was never arrested in any country until he arrived in Texas last year on a private plane with one of Guzmán’s sons, Joaquín Guzmán López. Guzmán López has pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges in Chicago; his brother, Ovidio Guzmán López, pleaded guilty last month.Zambada has said he was kidnapped in Mexico and taken against his will to the U.S.Zambada’s arrest touched off deadly fighting in Mexico between rival Sinaloa cartel factions, apparently pitting his loyalists against backers of Guzmán’s sons, dubbed the Chapitos — a term that translates to “little Chapos.”Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed.
Former Mexican cartel kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada pleaded guilty Monday to U.S. drug trafficking charges, saying he was sorry for helping to flood the U.S. with cocaine, heroin and other illicit substances and for fueling deadly violence in Mexico.
“I recognize the great harm illegal drugs have done to the people of the United States, of Mexico, and elsewhere,” he said through a Spanish-language interpreter. “I take responsibility for my role in all of it and I apologize to everyone who has suffered or been affected by my actions.”
Under the leadership of Zambada and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Sinaloa cartel evolved from a regional player into the largest drug trafficking organization in the world, prosecutors say.
“Culpable,” Zambada said, using the Spanish word for “guilty,” as he entered his plea.
He acknowledged the extent of the Sinaloa operation, including underlings who built relationships with cocaine producers in Colombia, oversaw the importation of cocaine to Mexico by boat and plane and the smuggling of the drug across the U.S.-Mexico border. He acknowledged that people working for him paid bribes to Mexican police and military commanders “so they could operate freely,” going all the way back to when the cartel was just starting out.
Zambada was arrested in Texas last year. He entered his plea two weeks after prosecutors said they wouldn’t seek the death penalty against him, a development that his attorney has called an important step in resolving the case.
The lawyer, Frank Perez, said outside court Monday that “the outcome was good,” adding that Zambada “wanted to accept responsibility, and he did.”
Zambada, 77, is due to be sentenced Jan. 13 to life in prison.
He traced his involvement in the illegal drug business to his teenage years, when — after leaving school with a sixth-grade education — he planted marijuana for the first time in 1969. He said he went on to sell heroin and other drugs, but especially cocaine. From 1980 until last year, he and his cartel were responsible for transporting at least 1.5 million kilograms of cocaine, “most of which went to the United States,” he said.
Prosecutors said in his indictment that he and the cartel also trafficked in fentanyl and methamphetamine.
Considered a good negotiator, Zambada was seen as the cartel’s strategist and dealmaker who was more involved in its day-to-day doings than the more flamboyant Guzmán. Nevertheless, prosecutors have said Zambada also was enmeshed in the group’s violence, at one point ordering the murder of his own nephew.
Zambada pleaded guilty to charges of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise between 1989 and 2024 and racketeering conspiracy, which encompasses involvement in a number of crimes from 2000 to 2012.
Prosecutors say he presided over a violent, highly militarized cartel with a private security force armed with powerful weapons and a cadre of “sicarios,” or hitmen, that carried out assassinations, kidnappings and torture. He acknowledged in his plea that he “directed people under my control to kill others” to serve the cartel’s interests.
“Many innocent people were also killed,” he said in an eight-minute address to the court Monday.
Zambada appeared momentarily unsteady as he arrived in a Brooklyn federal courtroom; a marshal grabbed his arm to direct him to his seat among his attorneys at the defense table.
As Judge Brian M. Cogan described the charges in Zambada’s plea agreement, the bearded ex-Sinaloa boss sat attentively, at times brushing his right hand through his white hair.
Guzmán was sentenced to life behind bars following his conviction in the same federal court in Brooklyn in 2019.
The Sinaloa cartel is Mexico’s oldest criminal group, with various incarnations dating to the 1970s. It is a drug trafficking power player: A former Mexican cabinet member was convicted of taking bribes to help the cartel.
U.S. law enforcement sought Zambada for more than two decades, but he was never arrested in any country until he arrived in Texas last year on a private plane with one of Guzmán’s sons, Joaquín Guzmán López. Guzmán López has pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges in Chicago; his brother, Ovidio Guzmán López, pleaded guilty last month.
Zambada has said he was kidnapped in Mexico and taken against his will to the U.S.
Zambada’s arrest touched off deadly fighting in Mexico between rival Sinaloa cartel factions, apparently pitting his loyalists against backers of Guzmán’s sons, dubbed the Chapitos — a term that translates to “little Chapos.”
Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed.
ATLANTA – Gregory Buckner has been sentenced to federal prison for possessing with the intent to distribute fentanyl and heroin and attempting to sell thousands of fentanyl pills disguised as oxycodone tablets.
“Fentanyl and heroin pose an especially insidious danger to the public because they are so often disguised as counterfeit pills,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan. “This investigation and prosecution are the product of our collaborative efforts with our law enforcement partners to remove these deadly drugs from our communities and hold accountable individuals, such as Buckner, who attempt to distribute and profit from them.”
“Keeping our communities safe is our highest priority,” said Robert J. Murphy, Special Agent in Charge of the DEA Atlanta Division. “The investigation and subsequent conviction of this drug dealer demonstrates the DEA’s commitment to fight drug traffickers who have no regard for the citizens of our community.”
According to U.S. Attorney Buchanan, the charges, and other information presented in court: In April 2023, Buckner attempted to sell 10,000 pills that purported to be oxycodone, but actually contained fentanyl. When investigators confronted Buckner in a vehicle just prior to this drug transaction, he jumped out of his car and fled on foot. DEA special agents then searched a storage unit rented by Buckner and found a kilogram of fentanyl and more than a kilogram of heroin. Buckner was arrested three months later as part of a fugitive operation.
Gregory Buckner, 48, of Decatur, Georgia, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May to six years, 11 months in prison to be followed by four years of supervised release. Buckner was convicted of possession with intent to distribute controlled substances, after he pleaded guilty on May 23, 2024.
This case was investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration with valuable assistance provided by the Georgia State Patrol and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Eric J. White and John T. DeGenova prosecuted the case.
John Abel Baca pulled up to the meeting in a Ferrari with a gram of cocaine in a medical glove.
The man he was there to meet was a customer, and Baca, an Inglewood police officer and the department’s union rep at the time, said he had a kilogram more of the product he could sell for $22,000.
But Baca wasn’t working an undercover case. Instead, the meeting in 2021 was being recorded by the FBI.
On Tuesday, Baca, 48, was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to one count of distribution of cocaine and ordered to pay a $40,000 fine.
In a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, Baca admitted he’d stolen drugs from Inglewood Police Department’s evidence room and sold them on the side for profit.
“Former officer Baca tarnished the badge and dishonored the majority of those who serve and protect our communities with integrity,” said Akil Davis, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office.
U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada echoed that sentiment in a statement, saying Baca “abused his position as a law enforcement officer to promote his drug trafficking activities.”
Baca bragged to a potential buyer in September 2020 that he stole narcotics and money during routine traffic stops, prosecutors said. He offered to sell “White China” heroin, an unlimited supply of black tar heroin and a kilogram of cocaine, according to his plea agreement. The buyer informed the FBI of what Baca was saying in February 2021.
The buyer, later identified as a confidential witness in court records, asked Baca what he should say if anyone asked where he got the cocaine.
Baca reportedly told him, “Tell them it came from f— Mexico,” according to court records.
Prosecutors focused on two meetings in their case against Baca.
In April 2021, Baca drove to a buyer’s home in his 2012 Ferrari FF with a small sample of cocaine in a medical glove. The meeting was recorded by federal agents, according to court records.
Afterward, the buyer gave the cocaine to the FBI. The product tested at 75% purity, prosecutors said.
In a follow up call, Baca arranged to sell the confidential witness a kilogram of cocaine. He met the buyer at his business on May 4, 2021. On that visit, he drove up in a Nissan Maxima with no license plates.
He delivered a brick of cocaine wrapped in a plastic bag and tape, which he carried in a Target shopping bag, according to court records. He asked the buyer for $22,000, which was provided by the FBI as part of their operation. Baca claimed he was making only $1,000 as part of the deal, but the government never recovered the cash.
Baca told a federal informant that he often traveled to Las Vegas to gamble at casinos and launder his money, according to court records.
Baca was also accused of recruiting a second person to help in his drug dealing. That person, Gerardo Ekonomo, 42, from South L.A., was arrested in Las Vegas in June 2021 with 3 kilograms of heroin in his car, prosecutors said.
According to federal prosecutors, Baca called Las Vegas police and tried to intervene in Ekonomo’s case. He claimed he was Ekonomo’s “handler” and suggested he “work the case off” by helping them.
Ekonomo was eventually charged with intent to distribute the heroin, and on Oct. 28, 2021, the FBI dug in his yard and found large quantities of drugs wrapped in black plastic, including 1,258 grams of fentanyl and roughly 462 grams of heroin, court records show. FBI agents also found evidence of a drug trafficking operation in his home.
Ekonomo claimed he worked for Baca as an informant and was authorized to transport the drugs to Las Vegas as part of a law enforcement operation, prosecutors said, but he also claimed ignorance of the drugs in the yard.
Prosecutors said Baca had $300,000 in his bank accounts and a similar amount in investments around the time of his arrest in October 2021. The amount of money in his accounts dwarfed his household income, prosecutors said. He also owned or partially owned multiple homes in California and Arizona, along with a 2018 Audi Q7, a 2001 Chevy pickup truck, and the Ferrari.
Baca offered a “sincere apology” in court, according to a statement from his attorney Victor Sherman.
He said he recognized that “he disgraced the police badge which he will live with for the rest of his life.”
The driver of a sport utility vehicle authorities say was carrying more than 80 pounds of cocaine may have gotten away with it if it weren’t for that meddling dog.
Around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, the SUV was traveling on the 15 Freeway through Temecula when it was stopped by agents with the San Diego sector of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
During a subsequent sniff test of the vehicle, a dog alerted agents of the possible presence of drugs. Authorities said a follow-up search uncovered a series of cellophane-wrapped packages stashed inside a false dashboard.
Agents arrested the driver and an accompanying passenger, and impounded the SUV for further inspection.
In all, authorities said they found 31 bundles in the false dashboard, containing a total of 81 pounds of cocaine.
San Diego sector Border Patrol agents have seized 2,437 pounds of cocaine since the beginning of the fiscal year, according to the department.
The sector has also seized 3,627 pounds of methamphetamine, 31 pounds of heroin and 475 pounds of fentanyl. That includes 3.65 combined pounds of fentanyl and heroin found from Aug. 11 to Aug. 17.
“I am proud to say that men and women of the United States Border Patrol are out there day and night protecting our communities,” Chief Patrol Agent Patricia McGurk-Daniel said in a statement. “With each successful narcotic interdiction, I know for a fact that we’ve saved someone’s life.”
Cannabis advocates in Colorado cheered the Biden Administration’s reported move to reclassify marijuana and said the decision likely would reduce businesses’ tax burden significantly.
Industry leaders cautioned that such a move — if finalized — would not resolve some major challenges facing the industry, such as limited access to banking. But they pointed to the symbolic importance of preparations by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to downgrade the substance’s drug classification.
A man pours cannabis into rolling papers as he prepares to roll a joint the Mile High 420 Festival in Civic Center Park in Denver, April 20, 2024. (Photo by Kevin Mohatt/Special to The Denver Post)
A long-term study on opioid addiction and cannabis use found little to no evidence that using cannabis can help addicts reduce or stop their long-term intake of illicit opioids.
The study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, was led by researchers at the University of Sydney and followed over 600 heroin addicts for up to 20 years, monitoring their cannabis and heroin intake at regular intervals to try and associate a relationship, positive or negative, between the two.
“The Australian Treatment Outcome Study (ATOS) recruited 615 people with heroin dependence in 2001 and 2002 and reinterviewed them at 3, 12, 24, and 36 months as well as 11 and 18–20 years after baseline,” the study said. “Heroin and cannabis use were assessed at each time point using the Opiate Treatment Index. A random-intercept cross-lagged panel model analysis was conducted to identify within-person relationships between cannabis use and heroin use at subsequent follow-ups.”
The results of the study did not find cannabis to be a statistically significant factor in reducing or ceasing a person’s opioid use, despite anecdotal evidence from addicts who claim the plant helps them use less opioids or stop using them altogether. The lead author of the study credited these misconceptions to the way previous studies were conducted, in that they only followed addicts for a short time and did not examine long-term impacts.
“Our investigation shows that cannabis use remains common among this population, but it may not be an effective long term strategy for reducing opioid use ,” says lead author Dr. Jack Wilson, from The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, at the University of Sydney.
“There are claims that cannabis may help decrease opioid use or help people with opioid use disorders keep up with treatment. But it’s crucial to note those studies examine short-term impact, and focus on treatment of chronic pain and pain management, rather than levels of opioid use in other contexts.”
The study actually found data that indicated cannabis use may lead to further opioid use, particularly around the two-three year period of the study.
“After accounting for a range of demographic variables, other substance use, and mental and physical health measures, an increase in cannabis use 24 months after baseline was significantly associated with an increase in heroin use at 36 months,” the study said.
That said, the study did not go so far as to make a claim that cannabis use may increase heroin use, it merely mentioned the data. Rather, the results section of the study indicated that there simply was not a significant enough relationship in the data to draw any conclusive conclusions, if you will.
“Although there was some evidence of a significant relationship between cannabis and heroin use at earlier follow-ups, this was sparse and inconsistent across time points. Overall, there was insufficient evidence to suggest a unidirectional or bidirectional relationship between the use of these substances,” the study said.
Dr. Wilson indicated in a press release from the University of Sydney that based on previous available research there does not appear to be a one-size-fits-all solution to opiate addiction, a sentiment which was further reinforced by the results of this long-term study.
“Opioid use disorders are complex and unlikely to be resolved by a single treatment,” Dr Wilson said. “The best way to support them is evidence-based holistic approaches that look at the bigger picture, and include physical, psychological, and pharmacotherapy therapies.”
Previous studies have found somewhat contradictory results compared to this one but as aforementioned, none of those studies were conducted for anywhere near as long. For instance, a study conducted through the University of Connecticut found evidence that cannabis users required less opioids while recovering from a particular major neck surgery. However, the study lasted less than a year and did include data on any possible adverse outcomes that may have occurred after the study, context which is important due to the nature of addicts to sometimes stumble into opiate addiction after having them prescribed for pain.
Additionally, a 2022 study published in Substance Use and Misuse found that around four out of five patients who were prescribed opioids self-reported in a survey that they were able to reduce or cease their opiate intake using medical cannabis. However, this study was based on one survey and did not follow anyone long-term. That said, there have been several other studies that found similar, positive results. In general, the issue of cannabis as a potential replacement for opioids appears to be a mixed bag until more research is conducted.
A new study shows that highly processed foods can be as addictive as heroin, cocaine and nicotine, leading some health experts to call for warning labels on popularly consumed snacks such as cookies and chips. The new research, which analyzed the findings of nearly 300 previous nutritional studies, was published recently by the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal.
The study was headed by University of Michigan professor Ashley Gearhardt, who previously created the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) by applying the same criteria that experts use to diagnose substance addiction, including uncontrollable and excessive consumption, cravings and continued intake despite potential negative health effects.
Although addiction to certain foods is not included in common diagnostic frameworks to assess mental health such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), research on this topic has grown rapidly in the past 20 years. Much of this research uses the YFAS, which was developed to measure food addiction by assessing DSM-5 criteria for substance use disorder in the context of food intake.
Study Finds 14% of Adults Are Addicted to UPFs
To complete the new study, researchers reviewed 281 previous studies conducted in 36 countries, which found that 14% of adults are addicted to UPFs (ultra-processed foods). The team of researchers was alarmed by the findings because of the amount of UPFs– foods such as cookies, ice cream, sausage, and sugary soft drinks and breakfast cereals– found in modern diets.
“The combination of refined carbohydrates and fats often found in UPFs seems to have a supra-additive effect on brain reward systems, above either macronutrient alone, which may increase the addictive potential of these foods,” Gearhardt and the authors of the study wrote in their new findings.
As UPFs have become more common, previous studies have shown them to be associated with serious medical conditions including cancer, early death, cognitive decline and mental health issues.
“Many UPFs for many people are addictive,” author Chris van Tulleken told The Guardian about the new study. “And when people experience food addiction, it is almost always to UPF products.”
Exactly why UPFs cause food addictions is not yet understood. Some experts believe that rather than one particular substance being the root cause of food addictions, a combination of UPFs taken together may be the cause.
While they are “not likely addictive on their own,” food additives could be “reinforcers” of the caloric effects, the researchers wrote.
Food Addiction Similar to Drugs and Alcohol
Natural, unprocessed foods normally have more carbohydrates or more fat, but not both. However, UPFs often have disproportionately higher levels of both fats and carbohydrates. Eating UPFs triggers a spike in dopamine that is followed by a steep decline in the neurotransmitter. The result is a cycle of craving, satisfaction and crash similar to drugs and alcohol, although not everyone is susceptible.
“Addictive products are not addictive for everyone,” said van Tulleken. “Almost 90% of people can try alcohol and not develop a problematic relationship; many can try cigarettes, or even cocaine.”
Past research has also found that sugary or fatty foods make healthier alternatives less appealing, a change that could have negative consequences on health, such as over-indulging and weight gain. However, avoiding UPFs has become difficult for many people because processed foods are so ubiquitous in the modern diet. As a result, the addictive properties of UPFs have led some health-conscious researchers to recommend that many foods should come with a warning similar to those for cigarettes and other tobacco products.
“Trying to quit UPFs now is like trying to quit smoking in the 1960s,” said van Tulleken.
Luckily, most of the substances are safe when used in moderation, leading online medical resource Healthline to recommend that processed foods make up no more than 10% to 20% of the calories in a person’s diet. To help reach that goal, van Tulleken suggests choosing foods thoughtfully.
“Ask yourself: is this really food? You can quickly move from addiction to disgust,” he said.
The seller, who went by the name Linda Wang, was curt when asked if she sold a chemical often used to create fentanyl.
“That’s banned,” Wang replied, before quickly providing an alternative: “CAS79099 powder is best. U can have a try.”
After more than a week of back and forth, she seemed impatient. “Ok. 79099 powder in USA warehouse now…if you need. Pls order asap,” she wrote in a text message exchange.
The interaction is part of a CNN investigation that explored whether US-sanctioned chemical companies in China are evading Washington DC’s crackdown on illicitly made fentanyl – finding at least one China-based company that had links to a sanctioned entity, and a seller eager to ship potential ingredients for the lethal drug.
More than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021, and two-thirds of the fatalities involved synthetic opioids – much of it believed from illicitly made fentanyl, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
The drug can be 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine – and pharmaceutical grade versions of it can be prescribed by doctors for severe pain. But illegally manufactured fentanyl has turbocharged the US’s opioid overdose crisis in the last decade, according to data from the CDC.
Controlling the illegal trade of the drug has turned into a geopolitical headache for the Biden administration, as China’s vast chemicals market – which supplies the world with raw materials for everything from perfume to explosives– is also a major pipeline of the building blocks of fentanyl, known as fentanyl precursors, according to US officials.
Further complicating the fight against fentanyl is the sheer variety of precursors that can be used to make fentanyl and other illicit drugs. Most such precursors also have legitimate uses – including for medical research – and are perfectly legal to sell, making up part of the booming transnational trade.
China has strict anti-drug policies domestically, but critics in the US say it is not doing enough to help monitor or regulate purchases from buyers aiming to use Chinese-made ingredients to manufacture illegal drugs overseas.
In 2019, Beijing stepped up its crack down on the production and sale of finished fentanyl and its variants, but US-China anti-drug cooperation has since stalled amid disagreements on trade, human rights, the Covid-19 outbreak and Taiwan. Hopes that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken would bring up fentanyl during a planned visit to Beijing died in early February, when Blinken postponed his trip after a surveillance balloon from China floated over the continental US.
As the opioid crisis topped the domestic agenda in 2021, the US sanctioned four companies in China accused of exporting fentanyl or fentanyl precursor chemicals. Online commercial records suggest ties between one of those sanctioned companies, Hebei Atun Trading Co., Ltd., and another China-based company called Shanxi Naipu Import and Export Co., Ltd., that continues to sell fentanyl precursors legally.
According to official public records in China, Hebei Atun Trading Co., Ltd., began liquidating in June 2021 and was formally dissolved in August that year. Shanxi Naipu Import and Export Co., Ltd. was registered in the same period, according to official records, and it shares a number of key things in common with Hebei Atun.
For example, Hebei Atun’s still-active Facebook page once linked to a now-defunct website of Shanxi Naipu – which is where CNN found Wang’s phone number.
The two companies’ websites are registered to the same email address, and at one time appeared to share an IP address. Today, Shanxi Naipu’s websites appear to be carbon copies of Hebei Atun’s since-deleted page – with the same navigation tabs, email address and stock photo of a pipette dropping amber-colored liquid into a cell tray. The Russian and Portuguese versions of the site list “Hebei Atun Trading Co. Ltd.” as their copyright holder.
One post on a Shanxi Naipu website was titled, “Hebei ATUN Trading Co., Ltd. Wishes you a Happy New Year!” (sic). It has since been deleted.
When presented with CNN’s findings, Shanxi Naipu denied ties to Hebei Atun, saying, “we are not related at all.” In statements emailed to CNN, Shanxi Naipu said it had purchased the sanctioned company’s Facebook account, email and cell phone number in order to “attract internet traffic.”
Shanxi Naipu also denied selling the fentanyl precursor that Wang offered by text, and stressed that everything they sell is legal, and said that they were taking steps to stop the repercussions from the apparent links to Hebei Atun.
“To prevent further impact from Hebei Atun, we have immediately removed relevant promotional websites and platforms,” the company said in an emailed statement.”
Logan Pauley, a China analyst who tracks criminal and drug networks, told CNN, “It’s easy on the Chinese side to start a new company to copy and paste the same text that you’re posting on social media or you’re posting on a trade website, and then just to recreate the same operation over and over again.”
And Gary Hufbauer, trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former US treasury official, likens it to a game of cat-and-mouse. While the US government can add an entity to its sanctions list “overnight,” said Hufbauer, there may not be the resources in the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces sanctions, to keep tabs on new companies that may leverage sanctioned companies’ branding or operations.
In a statement to CNN, a spokesperson for the US Treasury said it “had not hesitated” to go after “bad actors” – citing the four sanctioned Chinese companies – and would continue to sanction companies and individuals involved in the drug trade.
“Treasury continues to monitor the effects of our designations,” they said. “If additional information becomes available that can assist sanctions compliance efforts, when appropriate, we provide that information to industry and/or the public.”
Asked if Beijing was knowingly lax in its efforts to stem the flow of precursor chemicals from its country, the Chinese Foreign Ministry pointed out that most were not controlled substances, in a lengthy statement that also questioned US efforts to treat addiction and demand for opioids.
“China has always strictly controlled precursor chemicals in accordance with international conventions and domestic laws. The US side’s so-called ‘fentanyl precursors,’ a small number of them are listed substances by the United Nations, and China has always been resolute in implementing the listed measures. But most of the rest are common chemicals that are not listed by the United Nations, China or even the United States itself,” it said in a written statement to CNN.
“Government departments do not have the right or the possibility to regulate non-listed chemicals and common commodities,” it added.
The ministry statement went on to highlight China’s harsh domestic penalties on drug trade and consumption. “The Chinese people deeply resent drugs. the Opium War was the beginning of China’s modern history of humiliation. The Chinese government has always cracked down on drug crime, and China is a no-go area for international drug dealers.”
Such unregulated precursors, like the one offered by Wang, are not illegal to sell but can be used in the manufacture of illicit substances like fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cocaine.
Several precursors used to create fentanyl have been put under international control since 2017, but a savvy chemical engineer can combine legal precursors further up the synthesis chain to make similar compounds.
“What we have seen illicit chemists doing now is that certain components of the synthesis are now … harder for them to purchase, so what they’re doing now is they’re buying compounds that are structurally very, very similar,” Alexandra Evans, a forensic chemist with the D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences, told CNN from her lab in the US capital.
Or they can create fentanyl analogues, substitutes that are chemically similar to fentanyl and which has made the crisis more deadly in recent years. One fentanyl analogue was found to be 10,000 times stronger than morphine, according to a 2021 US government report.
Controlling the stream of chemicals has turned into a deadly game of whack-a-mole – where manufacturers are able to use a variety of precursors to synthesize fentanyl and its analogues faster than either can be identified, banned, or regulated.
Many of the building blocks to fentanyl have benign purposes and are legal to buy, but a menu Wang sent of Shanxi Naipu’s chemical products for sale appeared designed to support illegal drug manufacture, according to a synthetic chemist who analyzed the list for CNN.
It was “obviously a list curated to help people create illicit drugs,” Lyle Isaacs, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Maryland, told CNN of the more than 25 chemical compounds on the menu.
At least three compounds on the list could be made into fentanyl, he said. One of the compounds, CAS 79099-07-3, also known as 1-Boc-4-piperidone, was what Wang offered to sell CNN; the other two compounds also have legitimate uses and can be found, for example, in academic laboratories researching future medicines, Isaacs said.
Still more compounds on the list appeared to be building blocks for meth, ecstasy, ketamine, and the cutting of cocaine, as well as over-the-counter drugs like paracetamol, a common pain medication that can also be used to cut heroin and other narcotics, he added.
Asked about the list, Shanxi Naipu reiterated in its statement to CNN that all products on it are legal in China, stating: “We are not professional chemists but just a trading company. Even though we don’t have an intimate knowledge of the composition and use of thousands of chemicals, we have always strictly ensured the legality of our products!”
Attempts to contact Wang through the company for comment were not successful, and the company said in its statement that she no longer works for them.
There are measures that responsible chemical sellers can take to avoid their products being used for illegal drugs.
Identity checks are a hallmark of reputable sellers, said a former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official. The source spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. To sell non-listed chemicals, a good-faith seller would normally ask a buyer about the intended use of the compound, and whether the buyer had the backing of a company or institution, such as a research organization or university.
American buyers of regulated chemicals require licenses from the DEA, depending on how hazardous they are. Reputable sellers may also ask for tax identifications even for chemicals that are not controlled, like precursor materials, the source said.
At no point in the conversation was Wang aware, nor did she ask for the identities of the CNN reporters speaking to her or what CNN planned on using it for. She even offered a “door to door” precursor delivery service via warehouses in the US or Mexico – locations that CNN has been unable to verify.
In its statement to CNN, Shanxi Naipu denied that it had warehouses in either country.
The small quantity of precursor needed to manufacture fentanyl ultimately makes shipments destined for illicit ends hard to catch at the border, points out Martin Raithelhuber, an illicit synthetic drugs expert at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
“You have hundreds of thousands of tonnes (of chemicals in a shipment), and you are looking for a few kilograms, which are sufficient to produce a supply of millions of doses (of fentanyl),” he said.
Since China banned the production of fentanyl and related substances in 2019, Mexican criminal organizations have largely taken control of the drug’s production and sale, smuggling finished fentanyl to consumers in the US, according to a 2022 report from the Congressional Research Service.
Mexico is now the source of “the vast majority” of meth, heroin and illicit fentanyl seized in the US, according to the US International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) released in March 2023. “In 2022, the United States identified Mexico as the sole significant source of illicit fentanyl and fentanyl analogues significantly affecting the United States,” it reads.
“Criminal elements, mostly in the People’s Republic of China, ship precursor chemicals to Mexico, where they are used to produce illicit fentanyl,” Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this year.
“The only limit on how much fentanyl they can make is the amount of precursor chemicals they can get,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram told CNN in early March.
The Biden administration has taken aim at these groups and in February sanctioned a network of Sinaloa Cartel members and associated entities for their involvement in the fentanyl and methamphetamine trade.
Mexico’s law enforcement has also fought the trade, seizing and impounding hundreds of kilos of fentanyl precursors and pills – including a cache of over a million potential fentanyl pills in the Mexican border city of Tijuana on March 13.
Ultimately, tackling fentanyl requires close coordination between the US, Mexico, and China. Even if countries like Mexico had the best national control measures, international cooperation is needed to understand “which flows are the ones we need to watch or [be] worried about,” Raithelhuber said.
Former DEA official Matthew Donahue told CNN he would like to see Mexico do more, including cracking down on properties and other assets of those involved in the drug trade.
But as the US pressures other governments to help slow the flow of illicit fentanyl, relations between the three countries have turned into a three-way blame game.
Following the kidnapping of four Americans in a Mexican border town by cartel members in early March, US Republicans called for the US military to be allowed to fight cartels and destroy drug labs in Mexico – something Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called “an offense to the people of Mexico.”
“We are not a protectorate of the United States or a colony of the United States. Mexico is a free, independent, sovereign country. We don’t take orders from anyone,” López Obrador said at a news conference on March 9.
Washington has also called on Beijing to do more, with the latest US INCSR report describing China’s oversight functions as “poorly staffed and under-resourced to oversee its massive chemical industry.” Though it acknowledges Beijing’s harsh penalties for drug trafficking, the report laments ineffective controls on shipment labeling, customer vetting and pill-making equipment.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ statement to CNN emphasizes its “stringent” control of listed chemicals that could be used for drug-making and argues that Beijing has “improved” several “regulatory mechanisms such as end-user verification, leakage monitoring, and source backtracking, and has strengthened management of more than 200,000 chemical companies.”
Both China and Mexico have called on the US to do some soul-searching about demand for illicit fentanyl.
“US legislators and the authorities there are not doing their job because they are not addressing the causes (of addiction); there are no care programs for young people in the US,” López-Obrador said last week.
“Using China as a scapegoat will not solve the drug crisis in the United States … ,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s statement to CNN read. “We advise the US side to reflect on itself, stop shifting blame, strengthen domestic prescription drug control, enhance publicity on the dangers of drugs, and take practical measures to reduce domestic drug demand.”
Prescription opioids like oxycodone and hydrocodone – which have a similar chemical structure to heroin and fentanyl – were major contributors to the early opioid crisis in the US. Pharmaceutical giants, notably Purdue Pharma, downplayed the potentially addictive properties of the drugs and incentivized US doctors to prescribe the painkillers. But prescribing was curtailed as overdoses from prescription opioids climbed and now waves of heroin and illicit fentanyl took over, making the crisis far more deadly.
Amid the recriminations, fentanyl products continue to pour through US borders and Americans continue to die.
To raise awareness of the human toll, the US Drug Enforcement Administration last year created “The Faces of Fentanyl” exhibit at its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia where families can submit a photo of a loved one lost to the fentanyl crisis. So far more than 5,000 photos have been submitted.
“We can’t be desensitized” to the number of lives lost to drug overdoses,” Donahue, the former DEA official, said. “The pain and suffering that these families are going through. That has got to mean something.”
