ST. LOUIS — The Drug Enforcement Administration gave FOX 2 an exclusive look into its biggest fentanyl bust in the history of the St. Louis division.
A drug kingpin out of California will be sentenced in March for running an elaborate smuggling operation through St. Louis. An unsuspecting storage facility in Florissant was the key transportation point for massive amounts of fentanyl, a drug killing people in record amounts.
The St. Louis DEA seized 27 kilos of fentanyl hidden inside a storage unit. DEA officials said the fentanyl would have gone to a local distributor and likely broken down into smaller quantities and then provided to several local distributors.
The bust wasn’t about catching one person. The goal was to shut down the entire network. The man at the top was Gerald Hunter.
Agents said Hunter hid the fentanyl in secret compartments inside furniture. Shipping companies had no idea they were transporting drug-filled furniture from California to St Louis.
Agents seized guns, stacks of cash, and a hydraulic press used to make fake pills sold as Xanax, Adderall, and Percocet laced with deadly amounts of fentanyl.
When agents raided the Florissant storage facility in 2017, Hunter got away. It took years for US Marshals in St. Louis to find him. They finally caught him in Los Angeles.
