Prison for Minnesota man who smuggled unprecedented amounts of fentanyl tucked into stuffed animals

A St. Paul man has received a prison term topping 13 years for orchestrating what investigators said was the biggest fentanyl pill bust in Minnesota history, carried out by several accomplices who mailed the deadly opioid in stuffed toy animals from Arizona to the Twin Cities.

Cornell Montez Chandler, 25, was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul after pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute fentanyl in connection with the operation that ran from August 2022 to February 2023.

After serving 13⅓ years in prison, Chandler will be on supervised release for another five years.

One of the investigating agencies, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, said the capture of the unprecedented haul totaled 280,000 pills. They weighed more than 66 pounds and had a street value of about $2.2 million.

From 2022 to 2023, Minnesota saw an 8% decrease in drug overdose deaths from 1,384 to 1,274 deaths, according to preliminary data from the state last month. Though the numbers are preliminary, 2023 likely marks the first time since 2018 that Minnesota has seen a drop in this category.

“Chandler wasn’t just part of that epidemic; he fueled it,” prosecutors wrote to the court ahead of sentencing as part of their push for a sentence of 15⅔ years for Chandler, whose criminal history in Minnesota also includes convictions for first-degree robbery, fleeing police, drug possession and drunken driving.

“He not only traveled to Arizona with other co-defendants, where he personally participated in the packaging and shipping process,” the filing continued, “but he also organized and directed other defendants with shipping and trafficking information, retrieved or received packages from the recipients in the Twin Cities, and coordinated the distribution of fentanyl for further trafficking through several co-defendants.”

The defense asked that Chandler get 10 years in prison, noting he was exposed to substance abuse in his home as a child and that he suffered lingering trauma from when he was hit in the abdomen by a stray bullet at age 20.

Instead of seeking treatment for the resulting psychological problems, Chandler turned to illicit drugs and alcohol, defense attorney Frederick Goetz wrote.

According to his guilty plea and the charges against him and the others, Chandler and others flew to Phoenix to obtain fentanyl pills from suppliers, hid them in stuffed toy animals disguised as birthday presents and mailed them to addresses in and around the Twin Cities.

“[The] conspirators lined the interiors of the packages with dog treats in an attempt to prevent drug-sniffing dogs from alerting to them,” Chandler’s plea document noted.

Law enforcement in Dakota, Ramsey and Washington counties learned of the trafficking and launched a joint investigation that led to the seizure of six packages.

“Those seizures saved lives,” the prosecution’s presentence filing pointed out. “However, not every package was intercepted. Thousands of Chandler’s deadly pills still made it to their intended targets — the people of Minnesota. Mothers and sons. Fathers and daughters.”

Eight others from the Twin Cities have been charged as accomplices. Those cases remain open, with one defendant pleading guilty.

Agencies involved in the investigation included the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, drug task forces from Dakota and Washington counties, and the Ramsey County Violent Crime Enforcement Team.