President Joe Biden commuted the sentence of a woman who was sentenced to 15 years in prison over conspiring to manufacture and distribute an altered and more potent version of fentanyl.
A White House press release on Thursday revealed that Biden is pardoning 39 people and commuting the sentences of 1,499 people. Among the list of people who had their sentences commuted was Wendy Hechtman.
A press release from the United States Attorney’s Office District of Nebraska from November 2017 revealed that Hechtman and her husband, Ken, along with two other people, were charged “in a three count indictment.”
“Kenneth and Wendy are charged in Count I with conspiracy to manufacture 10 grams or more of Fentanyl Analogue between on or about March 2017 and October 30, 2017,” the press release says.
The Hechtmans were also “charged in Count II with conspiracy to distribute Fentanyl Analogue between on or about March 2017 and October 30, 2017” and were “charged in Count III with possession with intent to distribute 400 grams or more of Fentanyl Analogue on or about October 30, 2017,” according to the press release.
Hechtman, who is a “former journalist,” according to the Washington Free Beacon, is reported to have “manufactured and distributed carfentanil,” a strong form of fentanyl. Hechtman reportedly led “a drug ring that police blamed for a surge of overdoses and death” in Omaha, Nebraska:
Then there’s Wendy Hechtman, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for leading a drug ring that police blamed for a surge of overdoses and deaths in Omaha, Neb., in 2017. Hechtman, a former journalist, and her husband manufactured and distributed carfentanil, which the CDC says it the “most potent fentanyl analog detected in the United States.” Omaha police tracked down the Hechtmans after a spate of overdose deaths from the drug. “People were dying, people were overdosing, families were being destroyed on a daily basis, and then it stopped,” an Omaha investigator told a local news outlet.
Hechtman, who was switched to “home confinement” during the COVID-19 pandemic expressed to the New York Times that to have her sentence commuted would be “an absolutely indescribable relief.”
KETV Omaha 7ABC reported in a January 2019 article that Ken and Wendy Hechtman “pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute fentanyl.”
As Breitbart News’s Amy Furr previously reported, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that “an altered version of fentanyl known as carfentanil,” which is reportedly “100 more times potent than fentanyl.”
“In 2013, illegally manufactured fentanyl and fentanyl analogs (IMFs) entered the U.S. illegal drug supply as adulterants of or replacements for white power heroin in the Northeast and have now replaced heroin as the dominant opioid in the United States,” according to the CDC.
