(audience applauds)
(bright music)
(tense music)
- I'm just a tinkerer on the backside of nowhere.
Such an unlikely character for an operation like this.
(tense music)
What one wants in terms of a drunk conspiracy is
To be dull and ordinary.
You have to cultivate the persona
That no one is going to look at.
I drove an old piece of junk
And a worn pair of bib overalls and a flannel shirt.
It was a perfect disguise.
When you do that, then you can do what you want to do.
(tense music)
- I'm john roberts,
And this is "the godfather of fentanyl."
(fire roaring)
(tense music)
- On the east coast today, drug deaths in the news.
(sirens blaring)
Police are warning of a new and deadly hazard, a toxic drug.
- [reporter] fentanyl is normally used as a painkiller
In surgery, but more powerful fentanyl is on the streets,
And it's deadly.
- [reporter] on the street, it's called tango & cash,
And it can hit 100 times harder than heroin.
- Narcotics agents say the synthetic stuff is so strong
That many of its users end up in places like this.
(tense music)
- By early March 1991,
Less than four weeks since fentanyl first hit the streets
Of new york city, 36 people are confirmed dead.
Hundreds of others are hospitalized.
It's all the work of george erik marquardt,
The criminal chemist who goes by the nickname "squeak."
He created the street fentanyl in his home lab
In wichita, kansas.
But even he is stunned by just
How lethal its release is proving to be.
(tense music)
- After all the bodies dropped out in new york city,
I was personally cynical about
Whether fentanyl could replace the us supply of heroin.
I thought fentanyl would be too difficult
For the dealers to handle.
You know, they made a number
Of very conventional assumptions,
One that the stuff could be easily diluted.
(tense music)
- Today it's commonly known that it only takes a few grains
Of pure street fentanyl to kill a person.
But in early 1991,
When marquardt's fentanyl was first sold
As a heroin substitute, most street dealers
And addicts had never encountered this drug before.
In fact, it will take roughly two more decades
For fentanyl to emerge in the pill form
That we often see today.
So early users injected it directly into their veins,
Just like heroin.
(unsettling music)
- [george] then I saw the dealers adjusting
And the customers learning how to deal.
By "learning how to deal,"
I refer to learning how to do it without killing themselves.
(tense music)
Now, do I think it's good for people to do these things?
No, I do not.
If you keep doing it, it'll probably kill you.
It's gonna ruin your life.
It's going to do all kinds of terrible things to you.
But that appears to be what they want.
So who am I to stop them?
(grim music)
- The phenomenon of addiction
Is something I don't think people truly understand.
(tense music)
It is a serious illness that affects many, many people.
- All I remember was waking up in a shower dripping wet.
- It was no high. It was just (snaps) lights out.
- There was a lot of people died.
A lot of friends of mine, a lot of people I know.
- Even after that, my first words were,
"I gotta get some more of that."
- They know that this drug is taking their life
From them slowly,
But they are so addicted that their entire existence
Is centered around getting the drug that they need.
And so the people who supply the drugs,
Their moral compass is seriously skewed,
Because they are truly preying
On some of the weakest people in society.
(unsettling music)
- [george] in the summer of '91, I got the operation
So that it would work beginning to end in about, oh,
Five or six days, with substantial yields with fentanyl.
(upbeat percussive music)
Moscatiello actually came down
And got my second batch.
(air whooshes)
- Following the initial release of the street fentanyl,
Boston-mob-connected christopher moscatiello,
The original financier of the operation,
Strong armed his way back in as the drug's distributor.
(air whooshes)
He is now demanding marquardt pay off what he claims
Is a $1 million debt.
So marquardt is producing new, larger batches of fentanyl,
Which moscatiello is taking out
To cities all over the northeast,
Through the boston mob's
Established drug distribution network.
(upbeat music)
- [george] for most of the summer,
Moscatiello was putting the pressure on
For production, production, production.
Every two or three months,
Martier got a few thousand dollars out of moscatiello,
Picked up some fentanyl from me,
Paid me, and flew out of wichita next day.
(indicator chimes)
(soft music)
Since the bulk of product was not large,
You could transport it a great distance.
The rule was double bag or triple bag,
Stick it on-person, taped to body.
Kind of a hazardous operation when pure.
Until we paid off
This magic million-dollar figure moscatiello alleged
We owed him, he wasn't gonna give us our full share
Of the fentanyl price.
I knew I was being had,
But he was the only reliable source of money we had.
So you just have to keep on going and hope for the best.
(gentle surreal music)
- We were very concerned
Because fentanyl was now being identified
In overdose deaths in new york, boston, and philadelphia.
So where's it coming from?
- [customer] give me one more of that.
A little piece of it. - If you find drugs
On the street, they came from one of four sources.
They were either smuggled here, they were manufactured here,
They were cultivated, like marijuana, here,
Or they were diverted from some legitimate industry,
Like the medical industry, to an illicit use.
Those are the only ways you get drugs.
- [john] to start tracking down the source
Of the deadly fentanyl, law enforcement begins
At the end of the drug trafficking chain:
The street deal.
- We knew that the street distribution was important
Because that would hopefully give us links
To find out the source.
Heroin has different colors, depending on its origin.
In the case of the fentanyl investigation,
The local police were saying that this was distinguishable
By the fact that it was sparkly.
So we started to go out and buy heroin from street dealers,
But only asking for the sparkly stuff.
So how do you make this approach as an undercover?
It takes only a few minutes of surveillance
To see who's dealing.
Then you walk up to the guy and say, "hey."
- [agent] what's going on?
- Do you have any tango & cash? Be direct.
Say exactly what you want.
- What do you got? - I got vials.
- [agent] how much?
- [dealer] seven dollars for you.
- [gerald] you might do a dance.
Oh man, I'm not selling to you. You're a cop.
But drug dealers are in it to make money.
Eventually, they will sell you the drug.
- [agent] see the money right here? See the exchange?
- And you say, "thank you very much," and you walk away.
(contraption whirring)
If the drug was indeed fentanyl,
Then we would go back and we would surveil them.
A street dealer, you watch him long enough,
He will run out of drugs to sell.
He would have to be resupplied.
Then your surveillance concentrates on that resupplier.
And then try to work your way up,
Work your way up, work your way up
Until you hopefully find the source of the drug.
(tense music)
- [john] throughout the summer of 1991,
Agents worked the streets
Of major cities all over the northeast,
While chemists with the drug enforcement administration
Analyzed the purchased samples to try to uncover clues
To the fentanyl's origin.
New-york-based dea chemist jack fasanello leads this effort.
(tense music)
- My analysis concluded that all
Of the samples were fentanyl hydrochloride,
Which is not the commercial form of fentanyl.
(tense music)
- This microscopic clue
In the fentanyl's chemical composition
Has massive significance.
- That indicated to me
That it was clandestinely manufactured.
(tense music)
- [john] in other words, they realized that someone,
Somewhere must have ingeniously altered the standard formula
Of fentanyl to reinvent it as a street drug.
(tense music)
- At the time, fentanyl was a very difficult synthesis.
So I felt that whoever was producing this material,
And in such quantities, was a good, clandestine chemist.
(tense music)
- Based on this,
Dea concludes that a single chemist
Is probably responsible for all the fentanyl.
Now they must find the chemist and shut them down.
(tense music)
- [george] in the case of running
A drug manufacturing plant, you ask yourself:
If you were sitting on the other side of the fence,
How is it that you would detect someone like me?
And then you find a way of doing it
Without getting caught.
First off, the people selling these drugs did not know me.
So I thought that offered me a certain amount of safety.
But the next thing I thought is,
How long is it going to be
Before the law enforcement figures this out?
I mean, that was absolutely astonishing
That we didn't get caught in boston
With the "benzene fiasco."
- [john] a year earlier, marquardt's partner,
Money man christopher moscatiello,
Was nearly arrested while purchasing chemicals
For the fentanyl lab.
(air whooshes)
- [george] after that,
I decided the convenience of buying easily available,
Bulk chemicals is outweighed by the risk involved.
So that's when it pays to get creative.
(grim music)
- When manufacturing illicit drugs,
Clandestine chemists usually purchase starter chemicals,
Known as precursors.
The companies that sell these chemicals know
They can be used for drug manufacturing,
And so they keep detailed records of all transactions.
And those records can be a clue for investigators.
- If you buy it and it goes on an order form someplace
And it goes in a receipt someplace,
The bureaucrats will have access to that.
And conceivably, this can be discovered.
This is the kind of thing you want to avoid.
(grim music)
What the dea would do is just go through the receipts,
Anything that looked unusual to them,
And that disturbed me.
So I needed a better plan, right?
(grim music)
And instead of buying precursors,
I would make all of my own.
- If it was a chemical and he needed to make it,
Squeak could make it every step of the way.
It was all part of trying to not get caught,
Which is what all of us who do that sort of thing try to do.
- [george] that worked to disguise things
From the federal narcotics agents.
- But only someone of his genius would be able
To figure it out and pull it off.
(george laughs)
- [george] you know,
I had a bunch of people thoroughly fooled.
I even lied like hell to my sister.
(tense music)
- Both of our parents died fairly young,
Without speaking to erik.
But before that, mom encouraged me to write to him.
So we wrote to each other over the years.
And eventually it was not just writing,
It was long collect phone calls.
I was never in control of when I heard from him.
Just occasionally he would call and talk for a few hours.
(unsettling music)
When we heard in the news about the fentanyl,
Of course, I realized that my brother was capable
Of such things.
But I made the assumption that with his track record,
The federal government would know where he was.
- We really thought people were watching him closely,
You know.
- Such was not the case, as it turns out.
I got the impression my name had not surfaced
Because of my lack of academic credentials.
- Police found the bodies of three more people.
- [reporter] in the past week,
Five deaths have been reported from fentanyl.
- [reporter] in one case, an addict died while standing up.
- [george] there was a statement made by a forensic chemist
That he didn't think anyone with less
Than a master's degree could possibly produce fentanyl.
- [reporter] dea has discovered
The chemist producing fentanyl would have a master's
Or doctorate degree in chemistry.
- [george] I thought that was extremely amusing.
I was just unbelievably delighted.
So I wasn't looked at
With any particular amount of attention.
(tense music)
In the fall of 1991, there were several trips to boston.
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth we went.
And I thought we were going to clear the debt
With moscatiello and start getting some real money
For this thing.
But then moscatiello said he wanted me
To make him some 3-methylfentanyl.
(tense music)
He said, "make 25 pounds, and we'll pay you."
I thought, "jesus fucking christ!
That's dangerous chemistry."
- [john] 3-methylfentanyl is a chemical compound similar
To fentanyl, but it is about 60 times more potent.
(sirens blaring)
- The difference between fentanyl
And 3-methylfentanyl is just one little methyl group.
(tense music)
It's a very small change,
But that small change is in an important place
On the molecule.
An amount of 3-methylfentanyl
That would fit in your pocket could wipe out a whole town.
- That's a royal road to destruction.
(unsettling music)
And so I became suspicious about exactly
Who moscatiello was actually involved with.
(unsettling music)
- [john] at the time, james "whitey" bulger
Is known as the kingpin of boston's organized crime scene.
Among bulger's closest associates
Are the so-called "murray brothers:"
Joseph and michael.
(tense music)
- I'd heard that moscatiello dealt with mike murray.
Joe murray was kind of a...
I wasn't sure what the association was there.
(tense music)
But I knew they were some very dangerous people.
- The murray brothers operate from the shadows
And are known to have ties that extend
To violent overseas terrorist groups,
(bomb explodes)
Like the irish republican army.
- Several incidents of violence yesterday
In northern ireland.
Irish republican army terrorists exploded two bombs
In london today.
- The ira says it was behind an explosion
That rocked a small town.
- Let us pin the responsibility for these appalling crimes
To where it belongs:
On the common murderers of the ira.
(audience applauds)
- Just a few years earlier,
Joseph murray and whitey bulger had led a plot
To smuggle 7.5 tons of weapons aboard a fishing boat
To the ira, the irish republican army,
A group that was waging terror attacks
Against british rule in northern ireland.
The valhalla incident, as it was known, ended in failure.
But it is a good reason for marquardt
To question moscatiello's interests
And intentions with the 3-methylfentanyl.
- After the valhalla incident,
I thought maybe the organized crime types up
In boston wanted to weaponize this stuff and cause trouble.
For all I know, they could have every intention
Of destroying the civilized world.
I thought, "nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. No!"
I'm not a terrorist.
I thought it was a scam to get me
To deliver highly potent drugs.
And maybe they would kill me
So that I wouldn't turn up inconveniently later.
And so I told moscatiello, "well, you know,
It is extremely difficult to manufacture."
I knew that would buy me some time.
(grim music)
(sirens blaring)
(tense music)
- [john] by the summer of 1992,
The fentanyl investigation has been going on
For more than a year.
- Some cops call kearney avenue here
In jersey city the war zone.
They make as many as 25 arrests in one day.
- Meanwhile, another drug raid,
Part of an ongoing investigation into the increasing use
Of a drug that can kill within seconds.
- [john] but despite the enormous effort by law enforcement,
They have yet to uncover any significant leads
Into where the deadly drug is coming from.
- The arrests have not, however, led to the source.
- [reporter] the investigation is continuing.
- And while the fentanyl investigation slowly grinds on,
Agents across the country are caught up in a much bigger war
Against drugs of all kinds.
(tense music)
- There is a crisis demanding our attention.
Drug production and drug use threaten our futures
And our very lives.
We are determined to defeat this enemy, speedily.
- [reporter] americans paid $40 billion
For illegal drugs last year.
- It's a hell of a lot of money being spent for drugs.
- [reporter] the federal report shows an increase
In marijuana and methamphetamines.
- [reporter] if you thought acid parties were a thing
Of the past, you're dead wrong.
- Cocaine business certainly rivals any
Of the top fortune 500 companies.
- What no one in law enforcement can foresee
Is that an unrelated case will crack
The fentanyl investigation wide open.
(tense music)
- At the time of the fentanyl investigation,
Another agent asked me to assist in the surveillance
Of a truck that was heading from boston down towards mexico
To pick up four tons of marijuana.
- Agents of the fbi
And the drug enforcement administration swept down
On a large rented truck.
(tense music)
The arrest ended a long investigation by both agencies.
- End up arresting michael murray of the murray brothers.
(tense music)
- It's michael murray's second offense
For trafficking thousands of pounds of marijuana.
Only this time his arrest will have explosive consequences.
- At that time, I did not know
That the michael murray investigation had information
With regard to the laboratory.
- It's a close-knit community,
Until it isn't anymore.
Once somebody's arrested,
It's what are they gonna offer you?
And if there gets to be a rat in the ointment,
Well, loose lips sink ships, as the old saying goes.
(tense music)
- Michael murray recognizes that he was in trouble,
And he needs to do something to help himself get out of it.
He said that he would cooperate
With the federal government to lessen his sentence.
A cooperating source will speak ad nauseum about anyone
And anything, as long as he's not explicitly implicated.
That is, he is a totally innocent guy who just happens
To have all this inside criminal information
That he's been happy to share with the government.
But no, he was never directly involved.
(tense music)
Eventually, michael murray says,
"hey guys, I think I can help you with the fentanyl case."
And I said, "great."
Michael murray tells us that christopher moscatiello
Is financing the fentanyl laboratory.
Period.
- It's a bombshell revelation.
Christopher moscatiello is immediately recognized
As the suspect who, two years earlier, had alluded the dea
After purchasing a 50-gallon drum of benzene.
At the time,
Agents were investigating a fake company called tx green.
They now realize tx green was actually the start
Of the fentanyl lab.
(tense music)
- And so now we went back to looking closer at tx green.
Although now we were calling it tango & cash investigation.
(tense music)
- I formulate plans to follow up on murray's cooperation,
Because now michael murray has to enter a new phase
Of the investigation.
He has to be an active participant in the case.
We had to send michael murray in
To speak to christopher moscatiello.
- [john] michael murray and christopher moscatiello have
A long history of working together.
A few years earlier,
They were both arrested for marijuana trafficking.
Agents now plan to use that trusted relationship
To their advantage.
- [gerald] michael murray is basically instructed
To set up the meeting with moscatiello.
- [john] murray is wired with a hidden microphone
So the agents can monitor this meeting remotely.
(tense music)
- These two individuals know each other quite well,
And I think they considered each other friends.
- I only knew michael murray by name,
But chris told me that he was a friend.
His best friend.
Chris had a very small circle
Of people in his life,
And michael murray being his best friend,
Chris trusted him explicitly.
- After a few minutes of talking,
We hear moscatiello tell murray that he's concerned
Because they're getting too much heat,
Too much attention on distributing the fentanyl.
So maybe we'll kind of make some pills for a while.
(tense music)
- The agents immediately see an opportunity.
(tense music)
They have murray tell moscatiello that he can connect him
With a new york city gangster
Who has access to a pill press
And can help them make illicit pills
While the heat on the fentanyl dies down.
- Michael murray says, "here's a telephone number.
Have your chemist call this guy."
And moscatiello said
That he would have his chemist call the number.
That number was my telephone number.
(tense music)
Within the short time period, I received a call.
Because of my upbringing as a brooklyn kid,
I can have a very big brooklyn accent, if need be.
So I say that I'm gerrie from new york,
Alluding that I was tied into organized crime.
(gun blasts)
And it was martier.
Joseph martier.
- [john] joseph martier is a name familiar to agents.
During the tx green investigation two years earlier,
He was seen purchasing laboratory-grade glassware.
The agents now wonder if martier
Is the chemist producing the tango & cash street fentanyl.
(tense music)
- We started talking about chemical processes,
(surreal intense music)
Making pills.
There was a very popular pill called lemmon 714s,
Aka quaaludes.
(tense music)
Martier wanted to make counterfeit lemmon 714s.
So I said, "I can get you a pill press.
I can go meet you at your laboratory with the pill press,
And I can make the pills for you,
And we could set up business together."
- [john] but martier declines an in-person meeting.
Instead, he turns the conversation
To how he can make the pills himself.
- After a few minutes of talking, I said,
"you know that you can have all the raw powder
Of lemmon 714s, the drug itself,
But do you know anything about binding the material
In order to make the pills?
Do you know how to use the press to stamp the pills,
To make them look like lemmons?
Do you know the exact color
In order to counterfeit the pills?"
And as we got deep in this conversation,
It became clear that his ignorance was incredible.
In terms of aha moments,
The aha was that martier was not the, I mean,
With the big, capital t, chemist making fentanyl.
(tense music)
- Martier had called me one day.
And he said something like,
"the moscatiello operation offered
To come up with a pill press."
I got to thinking. Isn't that peculiar?
I don't think it's a good idea.
You know, if you're going to stay above water
In the drug game for any length of time,
You have to stay off the radar.
But martier persisted.
So finally, I said, "I don't know a lot about this.
Could you talk to these guys?"
I had a nose for bullshit, you know? (laughs)
(air whooshes)
- [john] by this point, the agents realized a third,
Unknown criminal accomplice must still be out there.
And so they instruct michael murray
To confront christopher moscatiello
To see if they can gain further clues
About who the chemist really is.
(tense music)
- In a normal drug trafficking situation,
Murray now would have problems with new york mobsters
And that he's unreliable.
Murray says to moscatiello,
"who the hell was the guy
That the new york wise guy was speaking with.
These guys are upset.
They wanna know if I'm setting them up."
Believe it or not,
This leads to moscatiello mentioning the fact that,
Well, the actual chemist is a guy named squeak.
(tense music)
And that is the first time we hear the name squeak.
(tense music)
The drug enforcement administration maintains a lot
Of records on individuals who are arrested,
And part of those records includes aliases.
So using the name squeak,
I come up with a george marquardt
Who was arrested in oklahoma for drug trafficking
And running a laboratory.
So we finally identified who we believed to be the chemist.
But now the question, the big question,
The looming question is, where is the laboratory?
(tense music)
- Unbeknownst to the investigators,
Marquardt is, at that very moment,
Expanding his drug manufacturing operation.
(tense music)
- Moscatiello was pestering me.
When are you gonna do the 3-methylfentanyl?
Sometime. Yeah, sometime.
(tense music)
There existed a considerable amount of bad feeling,
But I thought the bad feeling was overcome by greed.
By this time, I had gotten
About $100,000 out of moscatiello.
Moscatiello had aspirations
To manufacture every sort of insane
And profitable drug on the plane
And leapfrog to the next level of production
With the fentanyl operation.
I was interested in getting paid and making money, you know?
But to do that, I needed more space.
That's when we rented the facility
At the industrial park.
It was just absolutely perfect
For clandestine manufacturing.
(grim music)
I simply towed the equipment out there
And set up shop and got busy.
I called it prairie lab.
- He told me that he had his own business,
And it was called prairie lab, and he would do consulting.
(tense music)
- He said he did a lot of work for the oil
And gas industry down in kansas.
So he had an excuse for anything he was doing.
- [george] if anybody says, "what's going on here?
This looks like a big chemical operation."
Indeed it does. (laughs)
(tense music)
- I'm ed loibl.
I rented the other half of the building
By george in the industrial park.
(tense music)
He was super, super nice, super laid back.
Just could have played santa claus every christmas.
George never led on to be genius material
Or that he was, like, super smart.
I always thought george was just a chemist
From the kind of work he did.
The inside of his office looked like
A frankenstein laboratory.
Pumps, motors, lines.
Electric stuff going everywhere to it.
I was young at the time
And just always wondering how people made their money
And noticed he had a lot of stuff in his shop.
And I asked him one day how he made his money,
And he said, "making drugs."
(tense music)
I kind of laughed.
I just figured he was joking
To tell me to mind my own business
And not ask him where he made his money.
- He didn't hide. He wasn't hiding.
He had a wonderful relationship with everybody who knew him.
- If you're engaged in something you want,
Just kind of a friendly, "well, good morning.
Would you like a cup of coffee?"
That kind of thing.
My neighbors out in the industrial park,
They just couldn't understand a pair of bib overalls
And a flannel shirt.
It was a perfect disguise, really.
And what he thought was exactly what I wanted him
To think, you know?
Oh, I never could imagine.
And when you do that,
Then you can do what you want to do.
(tense music)
Which is having a lot of glassware set up,
And a rotary evaporator spinning merrily around,
And stirrers turning, and multi-neck flasks,
And things refluxing.
The vacuum pump thumping away.
I thought it was just absolutely wonderful.
Prairie lab gave us the capability
To produce many pounds of fentanyl efficiently.
So a whole bunch of possibilities open up.
(grim music)
(counter clicking)
- Back in boston,
Dea agents had discovered that marquardt hasn't been seen
By law enforcement in the state of oklahoma
For several years.
They are monitoring the meetings
Between mobster informant michael murray
And fentanyl distributor christopher moscatiello
In the hopes of finding another way to locate marquardt
And the lab.
- During one of the conversations
Between murray and moscatiello,
Moscatiello actually sat down and wrote out the fact
That they were making $6,000
On each death of a person from fentanyl.
What happens is, in the mind of an individual
Who's addicted to drugs,
When you find out that fentanyl is a potent drug,
They're gonna roll a dice and take the drug.
Because they're searching for that ultimate high.
So heroin users started actually seeking out fentanyl
And creating more demand.
But for moscatiello to say they were actually calculating
How much money they were making off
Of each death of fentanyl,
That kind of ticked me off.
That's when moscatiello states
That they're trying to increase production.
So michael murray says, "I can provide a very credible,
High-level cocaine dealer,
With an established distribution network of drugs.
They're helping the distribution of the fentanyl."
Moscatiello, being the person that moscatiello was,
Was probably seeing dollar signs in his mind.
So moscatiello goes away with the idea that murray,
His trusted friend, is going to help him.
(gentle music)
This gives us an opportunity
To introduce an undercover agent to moscatiello
To pretend to be a colombian cocaine trafficker
Who is interested in utilizing their distribution network
With the fentanyl.
(sirens blaring)
- At the time, there was only one colombian agent in dea.
- [gerald] and the person was harmon blanco.
(tense music)
- Hello.
(tense music)
- After more than a year and a half of investigating,
Dea agents are now poised
To crack the fentanyl case wide open
And close in on the laboratory.
- [reporter] neighbors never suspected a drug lab next door.
- In the most unexpected place in america.
- [reporter] they found the chemicals used to make fentanyl.
- If they could do it before marquardt slips away.
- Maybe is smarter than we all know.
(tense music)
Coming up on "the godfather of fentanyl."
(tense music)
Dea introduces its undercover agent
To infiltrate the fentanyl operation.
- If this guy wanted to kidnap me or wanted to shoot me,
Or whatever he wanted to do, nobody was gonna back me up.
- [john] while marquardt prepares to slip away.
He knew, sooner or later, he was going down.
And so he started getting all his ducks in a row.
- [george] you know, I could disappear.
Go somewhere else.
(sirens blaring)
(upbeat mysterious music)
(upbeat mysterious music continues)