Mystery of the poison pills

In July 2016, federal investigators arraigned a South Sacramento woman who they claimed was directly connected to the deadly fentanyl outbreak that ended scores of lives across Northern California, including 12 people in Sacramento County. At the time, a spokesperson for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration suggested that the arrest was just the first layer of an investigative onion, with more to be revealed about a spate of overdoses that mystified authorities, shocked public health officials and garnered national attention.

Yet, nearly a year and a half later, the trail has seemingly gone cold. The only person arrested in connection to the overdoses remains out on bond pending a trial on drug trafficking charges. And an event that joined Sacramento to a growing list of cities scourged by an opioid synthesized to be 50 times more powerful than heroin has largely faded from public view.

Mildred “Denise” Dossman was arrested last summer, following a widespread manhunt keyed to the mysterious appearance of counterfeit Norco pills. The outbreak was first detected in March of last year and culminated in more than 50 overdoses in Sacramento County alone, a dozen of which proved fatal. According to William Ruzzamenti, director of the Central Valley High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, illicit fentanyl had made its way to the streets of Sacramento from laboratories in China.

Ruzzamenti, who told SN&R that he was unable to comment on Dossman’s case due to its status as a pending investigation, works alongside state and federal agencies as part of a narcotics task force out of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department. Ruzzamenti said law enforcement began finding counterfeit pills pressed to look like the commonly prescribed painkiller Norco throughout the state as early as 2015.

As California clamped down on the overprescribing of opioid painkillers, their street value increased as demand further exceeded supply. A 2016 Wall Street Journal investigation found that by purchasing just $810 worth of fentanyl from China, an American dealer could potentially make $800,000 by converting the drug into black market pharmaceuticals.

Ruzzamenti believes these profit margins have created an incentive for dealers to begin venturing beyond sales and into chemistry, an area he said extends well outside the expertise of your average dealer.

“The pill presses we’ve found across the state produce tablets that look just like what you’d get from a pharmacy,” he said. “Someone buying off the street doesn’t know that what they’re buying isn’t real. It looks exactly the same.”

DEA Special Agent Casey Rettig told SN&R that drug dealers across the country have begun taking advantage of the inexpensive cost and relative ease with which illicit fentanyl can be purchased online to get unsuspecting addicts high on what they wrongly believe to be their drug of choice.

“We’re finding Chinese fentanyl in everything from counterfeit pills to heroin,” she said.

Rettig, who also declined to comment on the Dossman case, citing its status as an active investigation, believes at least some of the 56 area overdoses from last year can be tied directly to illicit fentanyl purchases made over the dark web, a virtually untraceable terrain of the internet where all sorts of contraband products are openly marketed.

“The rise of fentanyl across the country is more than alarming, and it’s fueling a rise in the opioid epidemic,” she added.

It’s an epidemic that is helping erode American mortality rates.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report in the December 2016 National Center for Health Statistics, which found that, for the first time in more than two decades, American life expectancy had actually declined.

The decrease couldn’t be pinned on the usual suspects. Cancer rates had dropped. Influenza and pneumonia showed no significant changes. Infant mortality held steadily low.

National public health and safety experts instead pointed to the rise in overdose deaths and suicides.

CDC maps show Northern California has been hit particularly hard by a national opioid epidemic. Deaths by “drug poisoning” have increased statewide more than 50 percent since 2002, far outnumbering car fatalities. Overdoses have become the leading cause of death for people below the age of 50. The CDC report found precisely what Rettig and Ruzzamenti both believe played a role in the Sacramento-area counterfeit Norco overdoses last year: illicit fentanyl, from China, ordered over the internet.

Ruzzamenti believes that the official number of 64,000 overdose deaths nationwide is nowhere near accurate. “Statistics are kept so differently in so many jurisdictions that it is impossible to get a truly accurate number,” he explained. “[The actual] number could be double, if not more.”

An overdose is what brought Dossman to the attention of authorities.

According to federal court records, Dossman remains out on bond on charges of possession and distribution of hydrocodone and fentanyl, as well as one charge of using a communication facility to facilitate a drug trafficking offense.

Dossman hasn’t been charged with any crimes relating to the overdose deaths.

The South Sacramento woman’s local criminal history doesn’t suggest a drug kingpin ordering fentanyl off the dark web to use in the manufacturing of black market pharmaceuticals. According to her brother Tony Curtis, that’s because she isn’t.

In a phone interview with SN&R, Curtis, who court documents show is a co-signer on Dossman’s $50,000 bond release, discussed the tragic events that led to his sister’s July 2016 arrest.

Curtis says the siblings had been reeling from the recent death of their mother. “I know that Denise was taking it pretty hard, like we all were,” he said. “She’d begun drinking a little, just to cope. I ain’t gonna say she had a problem or nothing like that, but she was just going through a rough time.”

At some point, Curtis believes, Dossman bought Norco pills from someone off the street, which she kept in her purse. He can’t say for certain whether she bought them with the intent of reselling them, or for personal use, but he is convinced that she had no idea they were counterfeit.

Dossman, he said, was staying in their deceased mother’s former South Sacramento home. Dossman’s son came by one evening along with a friend of his, who Curtis knew only as “Smoke.” At some point over the course of the evening, Dossman’s son and Smoke went into her purse without her knowledge and found the pills, which they believed to be Norco, Curtis said. Both men took the pills.

The following morning, Curtis said, all hell broke loose. Dossman found her son with his arms, legs and hands contorted, unable to speak or move properly. She called 911 and when paramedics arrived, they took her son by ambulance to the hospital. It was then, Curtis said, that “Smoke” was found unconscious on the couch foaming from his mouth. He was later pronounced dead.

Back at the hospital, Dossman’s son pulled through after tests identified fentanyl in his system and medical personnel used naloxone to counter the drug’s effects. Curtis believes that the hospital notified law enforcement of the overdose. He can’t recall whether Dossman was arrested at the hospital or later that day, but he said federal agents swarmed his mother’s house and turned it upside down looking for clues.

A trial date has yet to be set in a case that has seen little more than the scheduling of status conferences by federal prosecutors, with the next one set for December 14.

Sacramento Superior Court records show Dossman was convicted of two separate misdemeanors—for driving while intoxicated and falsely identifying herself to a peace officer—in 2003 and 2004, respectively. A 1991 felony charge of cocaine possession with the intent to sell was dismissed.

Dossman’s attorney Chris Cosca declined to be interviewed for this story, citing the ongoing investigation. “The charges are simply allegations and not evidence or proof of anything,” Cosca said. “Ms. Dossman pled not guilty and I intend to defend her vigorously and make sure her rights are protected.”

SN&R reached out to federal prosecutors for comment, but did not hear back.

In September 2016, Dossman was court-ordered to participate in Better Choices, a cognitive behavioral treatment program, as part of her modified conditions for pretrial release. The reason cited: “The defendant falsified a medical prescription.”

Federal court records show that Dossman graduated from the program a year later, on September 19, 2017.