Man gets 6 years in prison for fentanyl raid in Bloomington, one of the state's largest

A 38-year-old Washington state man has been sentenced to six years in federal prison in connection with a 2022 fentanyl raid in Bloomington that police said was one of the largest in the U.S. Midwest.

Marcus Trice of Lakewood, Washington, pleaded guilty to a drug trafficking charge earlier this year after police found 109,000 fentanyl tablets weighing more than 24 pounds in his Bloomington hotel room.

According to Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges, the single drug raid surpassed all seizures of fentanyl pills by a drug task force in Minnesota and Wisconsin in the previous year. A total of 63,000 pills were seized by law enforcement in Minnesota and Wisconsin in all of 2021, Hodges said.

Police had originally come to the hotel in the early hours of August 31, 2022, to investigate suspected financial fraud and arrested Trice, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for Minnesota. Trice was suspected of using another person's identity to pay for the room.

Police learned that Trice had flown from Seattle to Minneapolis the night before. When they searched his belongings, they found 11 large vitamin bottles wrapped in clothing in his suitcase, according to the U.S. Attorney.

The bottles contained more than 100,000 round blue fentanyl tablets labeled “M-30.” Police suspected the tablets were counterfeit oxycodone.

On September 1, 2022, Trice was first charged in Hennepin County with first-degree possession with intent to distribute and credit card fraud. However, on September 20, he was charged in U.S. District Court with possession of fentanyl with intent to distribute.

On January 25 of this year, Trice pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges.

On Tuesday, Minnesota District Judge Michael J. Davis sentenced Trice to six years in prison, followed by five years of probation.

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