A Hollywood woman was sentenced Tuesday for managing a lucrative drug delivery company out of her apartment, a jury finding her responsible for the supply of fentanyl who caused several overdoses in 2020 and 2021.
Mirela Todorova, 36, was tried from last month, accused of having directed an operation of prosecutors described as “Uber, but for drugs”. She was sentenced to nine counts, including three accusations of drug distribution which caused “serious bodily injuries” in three non -fatal overdoses.
After being ordered moved from the courtroom in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday on Tuesday by the judge for having disrupted the refutation of the accusation in the closing arguments, Todorova reacted impassively while the unanimous verdict of the jury was read, betraying any emotion.
The authorities said they had been alerted for the first time to the operation in 2020, when Ray Mascolo, resident of Beverly Hills, was found dead, after buying fentanyl oxycodone pills from one of Todorova’s delivery drivers.
The three overdose survivors testified during the downtown Los Angeles. Two of them, as well as several dissatisfied customers, warned Todorova several times throughout 2020 and 2021 that they sold dirty medicines, according to text messages obtained by the Drug Encompement Administration.
But over and over again, she ignored their concerns to maintain the profits, said her former delivery man Kather Sei during the trial.
“It is not something for which I have registered,” said Sei, who waits for conviction after pleading guilty of drug possession with the intention of distributing. “People fall sick. People are injured.
In addition to the fentanyl distribution counts, which bear a compulsory minimum prison sentence of 20 years, Todorova was found guilty of selling methamphetamine, cocaine and ecstasy, engaging in a conspiracy and making false declarations to the authorities.
The DEA agents who searched Todorova’s apartment said they had found several stocks of plastic bowls containing colored pills and powders – next to them, packaging materials and kitchen scales with chalky residues. Silver ziplocs bags, labeled by the amount, were hidden in bedside drawers and scattered around the ground.
Agents ultimately Property seized A cache of drugs including cocaine, MDMA, ketamine, fungi and various pills and capsules, including discolored oxycodone which has been tested positive for fentanyl. They also confiscated nearly $ 9,000 in cash and the iPhone of Todorova, who said that the prosecutors stored “a daily newspaper of a drug owner operating a drug company”.
The evidence of Todorova’s Imessage and Whatsapp accounts have shown that it regularly sends medication menus to update to her drivers and customers, asked Sei to cook medicines in her apartment and asked for the efficiency of other delivery drivers to maximize his profits, estimated at around $ 790,000.
By connecting her personal phone via iCloud to several “work phones” used by her employees, prosecutors said, she kept a “watchful eye on her business” – even if she saw regularly between the United States and Mexico to raise her princess Jaguar for pets.
Taking position in his own defense on Monday, Todorova rejected the idea that she orchestrated the conspiracy and rather embarked on a support role in the face of his ex-little friend, Javier Lopez, who would also have sold drugs in Holilywood at the same time using the same telephone number and several of the same administration drivers.
The prosecutors said on Monday that a DEA agent had tried without success to contact Lopez to serve him an assignment at trial and argued that his alleged involvement in the plot does not deny Todorova’s guilt.
Todorova testified that she had met Lopez, a self -proclaimed club promoter over ten years ago when she started partying in Hollywood.
“I was attracted to his personality and the way he knew everyone and was the center of attention,” said Todorova. The marking with Lopez in the hottest nightclubs in the city was exciting, she added: “Ditto that it would be for any girl in the middle of the twenty who had not been out for some time.”
The first time a friend of Lopez offered her cocaine, said Todorova, she politely refused, fearing that she would become dependent. But in a few years, it was a semi-regular drug consumption, then an occasional delivery delivery for Lopez. However, she said, she still considered the business as hers.
“In Ms. Todorova, Lopez found easy prey,” Todorova’s lawyer Charles Brown wrote in a last -minute request on Sunday to reject the case.
“She was young, attractive and apparently intelligent, but suffering from a neurodevelopmental disorder that made her socially naive, socially isolated and emotionally hungry for love and connection – which made her particularly vulnerable to mistreatment and manipulation,” said Brown in movement.
But the former drivers and customers of Todorova testified that she had not answered anyone. She has said so much by herself in many text references to “My Business” and “My drivers”. In a 2018 message, she told a supplier that Lopez worked for her.
As for overdoses, Brown argued during the trial that the three victims of the case had taken other drugs or drank alcohol the same evening when they bought Oxys from Todorova. Such substances have a “synergistic effect”, he said, and therefore with regard to the conduct of the cause of the overdose, “it is not so easy for an equation”.
But laboratory tests have shown that a victim of overdose had a fentanyl metabolyte as well as cocaine and benzodiazepines – commonly sold like Valium or Xanax – in their system.
And in text messages, Todorova confirmed to a client that she had in fentanyl pills in stock that looked like “perc 30” or oxy blues. She said they were $ 30 each.
A Bulgarian immigrant who attended primary school in Canada before his family moved to Newbury Park in the early 2000s, Todorova was a calm and intelligent child, said his mother Margaret Todorova during the trial. Before his solo move to Hollywood in 2020, Todorova was on the right track to pursue a career in biotechnology.
Even if Todorova threw herself on the orbit of his ex-girlfriend, her mother said that she had never stopped defending her return to her studies.
California Daily Newspapers
