Prince George’s man gets 42 months for fentanyl pill conspiracy
Daijon West, 29, got 42 months for moving fentanyl-laced fake oxycodone pills into the D.C. area, including a 5,500-pill shipment from California.
A Prince George’s County man who moved fentanyl-laced counterfeit oxycodone pills through the Washington region was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison, a case that prosecutors say underscores how counterfeit painkillers continue to fuel overdose risk across the DMV. Daijon West, 29, was also ordered to serve four years of supervised release after finishing his prison term.
West pleaded guilty Feb. 5 to conspiracy to distribute fentanyl. Federal prosecutors had sought a 68-month sentence, but U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras imposed a shorter term on Thursday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Court papers show the operation ran for years and relied on bulk shipments from California. West either traveled to the West Coast himself or had the pills mailed to him. In one seizure in May 2022, law enforcement intercepted a package containing about 5,500 counterfeit oxycodone pills shipped from California to West’s Maryland home.
From September 2022 through April 2025, West sold fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills to a law enforcement source on nine occasions. The transactions ranged from 100 pills to more than 1,000 pills at a time. Lab testing found fentanyl in the pills, and investigators also detected fentanyl analogues, methamphetamine, xylazine, or other substances in some of the sales, a combination that made the fake tablets even more dangerous for anyone who believed they were taking legitimate oxycodone.
The investigation was handled by the FBI Washington Field Office, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Washington Division and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service Washington Division. Assistant U.S. Attorney Solomon Eppel prosecuted the case.
West’s sentence lands as federal authorities in Washington continue pressing a broader fentanyl case that prosecutors say has already produced seizures of more than 450,000 fentanyl pills, 1.5 kilograms of fentanyl powder and 30 firearms. In related prosecutions, authorities have described trafficking networks moving counterfeit pills from Southern California into the DMV and using flights, mail and interstate travel to move the drugs. One such case led to a 160-month sentence for Columbian Thomas in October 2024 after prosecutors tied a larger conspiracy to hundreds of thousands of counterfeit pills and the overdose death of Diamond Lynch in Southeast D.C.
For Prince George’s County, the West case reflects the local reach of a regional pipeline that has pushed counterfeit opioids from California into Maryland neighborhoods, with federal prosecutors treating the pills not as isolated street sales but as part of a wider public-safety threat.
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