Fentanyl trafficking ring kingpin pleads guilty, will serve at least 10 years

CONCORD - The leader of a major fentanyl trafficking ring that sold drugs all over New England including New Hampshire has pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Concord.

Raulin Martinez, 27, of Lawrence, Mass., pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to distribute over 400 grams of fentanyl and in a conspiracy to launder money.

According to court documents and statements made in court, the defendant helped lead a drug trafficking organization of more than 30 operatives that sold fentanyl to customers from various New England states, including New Hampshire, from 2015 to April of 2018.

The organization, which authorities allege was also led by the defendant's brother, Sergio Martinez, used the name "Brian" to represent the drug business and sold well in excess of 36 kilograms of fentanyl from January through April of 2018.

The defendant helped run the business and supervised fentanyl distributors as well as assisted in collecting and counting drug proceeds, laundering that money, and sending it to relatives in the Dominican Republic.

Martinez has agreed to forfeit over $81,000 and to pay a money judgment of $165,500.

He is scheduled to be sentenced on March 20 and faces a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years of imprisonment and a maximum sentence of life, a fine up to 10 million dollars and a term of supervised release of at least five years and as much as life.

Thirty-three additional defendants have been charged in the fentanyl trafficking conspiracy. Five have pled guilty and one, Jepherson Cabrera, has been sentenced to 156 months in prison.

"Fentanyl trafficking has caused tremendous damage in New Hampshire," said U.S. Attorney Scott W. Murray. "In order to protect the citizens of the Granite State, we are working closely with the entire law enforcement community to stop the flow of this deadly drug into our state. It is imperative that we dismantle the criminal organizations that have been profiting from the sale of fentanyl and other deadly drugs in New Hampshire."

This investigation was conducted by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF). The OCDETF program is a federal multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional task force that supplies supplemental federal funding to federal and state agencies involved in the identification, investigation, and prosecution of major drug trafficking organizations.