Fentanyl Dealer Cons SF Jury With (Unsubstantiated) Claims He Was Trafficked

Will SF Public Defender’s Office continue to test Boudin-falsehood, to preserve fentanyl industry?

Chesa Boudin, father of the human trafficking fable

Despite the devastating economic effects San Francisco experienced because of our Covid shutdown, more people perished from overdosing on fentanyl than from Covid.  During that period, District Attorney Chesa Boudin refused to convict the fentanyl drug dealers that SFPD arrested.  To justify his actions, on June 21, 2021, Boudin famously created the myth that the fentanyl dealers were the real victims:

     Some of these young men (fentanyl dealers) have been trafficked here under pain of death.  Some of them have family members in Honduras, who have been or will be harmed if they don’t continue to pay the traffickers that brought them here.

     I can tell you about a young Honduran man who I personally represented, when I was a public defender, who was accused of selling drugs and who was guilty of selling drugs and who eventually pled guilty to what he was accused of.  That when he cooperated years before I met him, with federal authorities in a different state, his father in Honduras was killed in retaliation.

There are a couple problems with Boudin’s story:

First, this is just a slick non sequitur.  If a member of a drug dealer’s family was killed because the dealer squealed to federal authorities, that does not make the dealer a victim of human trafficking- the killing occurred because of his snitching.

Second, during my career with SFPD’ Narcotics unit, I was in contact with hundreds of Honduran drug dealers and none of them claimed they were trafficked here.  For this article, I spoke to SFPD officers with over 100 years of working in the Narcotics’ unit, and they told me no Honduran drug dealer has ever claimed they were trafficked to the US.  In preparation for this article, I spoke to a San Francisco Norteño member (red gang), who told me he had been held in custody with several Honduran drug dealers, and “they all said they came here (USA) just for the money.  None claimed they were trafficked.”

The problem with Boudin’s unsubstantiated fantasy is that his believers just want the tale to be true.

Justin Sevilla Obiedo

On June 11, 2021, Obiedo was first arrested in San Francisco.  At the entrance to the Civic Center Bart, which provides a multitude of escape routes, Tenderloin officers stumbled upon Obiedo selling drugs to another individual.  On Obiedo’s person, SFPD found fentanyl, rock cocaine, and methamphetamine.  He told SFPD officers he was selling narcotics “to support his family in Honduras.”  Obiedo made no mention of being the victim of trafficking.

Less than a month later, on July 8, 2021, at 7th and Market Streets, Obiedo was arrested after he sold both fentanyl and methamphetamine to Narcotics Officer Montero.  Arresting officers searched Obiedo and found over an ounce of fentanyl (street value $600) on his person.  Obiedo also had $510 in his pants’ pocket.

On September 8, 2021, again at 7th and Market Streets, Obiedo sold fentanyl to Officer Puccinelli.  Obiedo was arrested and during a search of his pockets, SFPD confiscated $455, heroin, rock cocaine, and 1.5 ounces of fentanyl (street value $800+).

On June 29, 2022, Southern Station Officers Cope and Cestoni were at a call for service at 7th and Minna Streets.  From a third-floor window, the officers saw Obiedo and a partner sell suspected narcotics to the occupant of a pickup truck.  The officers, who were in full uniform, went to detain the drug sellers, but Obiedo ignored their commands and walked away. When the officers caught up to Obiedo, he had in his pockets, $197, an electronic scale to measure narcotics, and a pharmacy of heroin,  ½ ounce of methamphetamine, ½ ounce of cocaine rocks, and ounce of mannitol, which is used to cut (dilute) fentanyl.

SF Public Defender tests Boudin’s urban myth in Obiedo’s jury trial

Get a tissue ready, this is going to be heart wrenching.

Dept 16, Presiding Judge Eric R. Fleming. (Court #22- 006301)

In Obiedo’s December 14, 2022 jury trial, he claimed he came across the US border in 2017.  He agreed to pay the facilitator of the crossing, a coyote- $12,350.  Obiedo initially worked in San Antonio and then Atlanta as both a painter and installing hardwood floors.  From his $15 to $16 per hour salary, he was able to afford half of the $1,550 monthly rent for the apartment he rented with his brother.

But Obiedo said he couldn’t make much money installing indoor floors or paint interiors because “it rained a lot in Atlanta, sometimes two-to-three days per week.”  (Obiedo’s 2.5 rainy days per week in Atlanta equates to 182 days per year or close to the 200 days it rains in the Amazon rainforest.)

In May of 2021, Obiedo was arrested in Georgia for drunk driving. (Note: poverty-stricken Obiedo’s access to a vehicle.)

Through he is a skilled laborer, over his first four years in the south, Obiedo told jurors he repaid his patient coyote approximately $2 per day, which reduced his border crossing fee by only $2,500.

Obiedo came from the narco-state of Honduras.  In November 2018, the US arrested the former president’s brother, Tony Hernandez, for drug trafficking and collecting a $1 million contribution on behalf of his brother’s presidential campaign from the biggest drug dealer in the world-Mr. El Chapo Guzman.  Hernandez is now serving a life sentence in the US.  In April of 2021, the former President of Honduras, Juan Hernandez, was arrested for drug trafficking and extradited to the US as well.  Nevertheless, in May of 2021, when his extremely patient coyote suggested he seek work in Oakland, California, Obiedo was naïve enough to think it was in construction- which is like a Saudi saying he applied to Exxon’s Texas headquarters to work on an assembly line manufacturing basketballs.

When Obiedo moved to Oakland, he immediately lived with his fentanyl supplier.  Apparently he wasn’t suspicious his roommate didn’t have construction tools around. Obiedo was quickly arrested for selling drugs in Oakland, meaning he was arrested in two states within the same month.  During his SF trial, Obiedo confirmed that he never mentioned to his Oakland public defender that he had been “trafficked” to the United States.

After the Oakland arrest, Obiedo said he started working about four hours per day selling drugs in the Civic Center area of San Francisco.  (Presumably, those four hours of exhausting work prevented him from seeking a second legitimate part-time job.)

In his testimony, Obiedo told Deputy District Attorney Angela Roze, “I was pressured. These people use harsh words.”  He said he received threats via phone calls from Honduras.  Roze asked if Obiedo had his cellphone with him, and he said someone (conveniently) had taken away the cellphone that the threats were made to. 

Obiedo told the court that he “paid him (his fentanyl supplier) whatever I received.”  Thus, Obiedo led the jury to believe his fentanyl selling enterprise produced no money for him to live on.  Yet regarding rent, Obiedo said, “I pay $950.”  (But wait, how could he pay rent if he turned over all his money to his supplier?)

Then Obiedo introduced contradictions when he stated his fentanyl supplier accused him, “that I made a bunch of money, but that wasn’t the truth.  He told the coyote, why am I not paying the coyote back if I am doing so well here.”   Per Obiedo’s testimony, he still owes his coyote $9,500, which means over the past year he paid less than a dollar per day to the coyote.  And that’s pressure?

When Roze asked why Obiedo didn’t sell his $6,000 car to pay off his debt, Obiedo said, “I could but what happens if I find some work?”  One must appreciate the unlikelihood of Obiedo walking around with $500 in his pocket though he only paid his coyote a dollar per day, as his family huddles in Honduras in fear of retaliation, while he is cruising around the Bay Area, a place starving for workers, in a $6,000 car hoping a job will fall in his lap. 

Yeah, the Kleenex was unnecessary.  This story smells of you-know-what de toro and nose plugs would have been more appropriate.  Obiedo’s real talent is making excuses.

Trafficking defined:

Of course, Obiedo is lying about the failure of his fentanyl business.  But was he a victim of human trafficking?   The Department of Homeland Security defines trafficking as:

Human trafficking involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act.

Nowhere in Obiedo’s testimony did he explain how he was forced across the border to the United States.  Essentially, Obiedo willingly approached a coyote and said, “Hey dude, can I pay you to help me cross the border?”  That’s it and that is not trafficking.  There was a complete absence of “force, fraud, or coercion.” 

There is a difference between someone pointing a gun at your head and saying, “You are going to help me rob this bank,” versus robbing a bank by yourself because you owe a loan shark for your gambling debts.

Obiedo is either lying about what he still owes the coyote or he reneged on his debt.  But he was not trafficked.

Boudin’s lies should not gain traction

Unfortunately, too many in the jury believed Obiedo’s incredulous story and split unfavorably against conviction.  The hung jury verdict raises the issue of whether all fentanyl salespersons are due a free pass if they claim, without proof, that they are the victim of human trafficking. (Wait, will David DePape be found guilty of his assault on Paul Pelosi’s if he claims he was trafficked to the United States from Canada?)

Obiedo never claimed to be a trafficking victim until he was represented by the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, and they planted Boudin’s novel fable in his head.  But Boudin has a history of lying.  On the same plane as Elizabeth Holmes’, Sam Bankman-Fried’s, George Santos’ and Mr. Chesa Boudin’s yarns, I am going to share with readers that I met with Boudin’s client and he told me he made up the whole trafficking story and his father was not killed.  Prove me wrong Chesa.