Federal court records showed an informant orchestrated a drug deal that led Salem police to 25,000 fake pills made with fentanyl, 28 pounds of meth and 6 pounds of heroin.
Rico Rigutto arrived in the parking lot of Walgreens on Northwest Wallace Road Tuesday night in a Chevy Tahoe with 3,000 fake Oxycodone pills and an automatic pistol.
As watching detectives later recounted in an affidavit, Rigutto waited for about 30 minutes for a buyer who never showed up. He then drove away, was stopped by police and arrested.
His arrest was the latest step by local police and federal agents working to stem increasing trafficking in counterfeit opiates and a rising toll from overdoses.
The affidavit, filed in federal court to support a criminal complaint, recounted how the investigation unfolded and led investigators to Rigutto’s Salem home.
A search there turned up about 25,000 fraudulent oxycodone pills, 28 pounds of methamphetamine, six pounds of heroin, 16 firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition and around $75,000 in cash, according to a Friday news release from the Salem Police Department. That amount of methamphetamine could produce approximately 64,000 user doses.
Rigutto, 25 of Salem, has been charged in Portland U.S. District Court with possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance, conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance, unlawful possession of a machine gun and possession of a machine gun in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, according to the criminal complaint.
Rigutto was booked Wednesday afternoon into the Multnomah County Jail in Portland, where he remained in custody without bail on a U.S. Marshals Service hold as of Friday afternoon, the jail’s roster showed.
Federal court documents detail the international scope of Rigutto’s arrest, and how he got on the radar of Salem police and the FBI. Except where noted, this is account is based on the federal affidavit.
Rigutto’s activities came to light as Salem police are seeing a rise in overdoses, along with an increase in the trafficking of counterfeit opiate pills and drug seizures, Salem Police Lt. Ben Bales, who leads the agency’s Strategic Investigations Unit, said in an email.
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine, is often mixed with heroin to make it more potent or be disguised as potent heroin, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
“The trafficking of counterfeit opiate pills is definitely on the rise in our area, but also across the nation,” Bales said. He said police are seeing fentanyl mixed with many other narcotics like cocaine, Xanax, meth, and “the combinations can be lethal.”
Salem police and FBI Portland declined to comment on details of Rigutto’s case, citing an open investigation.
But the affidavit recounted how in November, Anthony Burke, a Salem detective assigned to an FBI task force, started working with an informant who had been arrested on federal drug charges.
The informant has previously been convicted for multiple drug charges, third-degree robbery, first-degree failure to appear, fourth-degree assault and multiple counts of second- and third-degree theft.
“(The informant) is cooperating in the hope of receiving sentencing consideration,” Burke wrote in the affidavit. The informant identified one supplier as a man called “Gilly,” who lives in Mexico and “would facilitate the delivery” of fake oxycodone pills made with fentanyl to Oregon.
The informant told Burke of communicating with Gilly through social media, texts and phone calls.
Burke asked the informant during the week of Dec. 6 to reach Gilly in Mexico and request to buy 3,000 fake oxycodone pills. Gilly tried to facilitate the deal, but couldn’t then.
On Dec. 14, according to the affidavit, Gilly arranged a deal for a Salem supplier to provide the pills, with a meeting arranged at Walgreens.
“While in my presence, the (informant) received information from ‘Gilly’ stating his local source will be driving a Tahoe with black rims,” Burke wrote.
Burke wrote that about 10 minutes later he and other Salem detectives at Walgreens saw one person – later identified as Rigutto – park a tan Chevrolet Tahoe with black rims and an Oregon license plate.
The affidavit said after later stopping the Tahoe, they found in the center console a loaded Glock 30S.45 pistol with one round in the chamber. On its left side was an aftermarket switch that converted it from semi-automatic to a fully automatic firearm, Burke wrote, “causing the Glock pistol to shoot, be designed to shoot, and be readily restored to shoot automatically more than one shot, without manually reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”
Detectives also said they found a clear plastic, heat-sealed package behind the front passenger seat on the floorboard which looked to contain about 3,000 blue pills that Burke recognized as fake oxycodone pills made with fentanyl. A chemical field test of one of the pills showed it contained fentanyl.
Burke wrote that there has been a large rise in fraudulent oxycodone pills – commonly blue in color and stamped with an “M” on one side and “30” on the other – being manufactured and distributed in the U.S.
“Based upon my experience and from subsequent forensic laboratory reports I have read, these pills are regularly manufactured with fentanyl,” he wrote.
He also said firearms are “tools of the trade” for drug dealers.
“I know that drug dealing is both a cash business and a very dangerous business and that drug dealers regularly arm themselves with firearms to protect themselves, their drugs, and their profits, thus ensuring they can continue their drug dealing activities,” he said.
After detectives later searched Rigutto’s residence, they determined the street value of the heroin, meth and pills they found was nearly $250,000, the news release said.
Police also said two other guns recovered during the search were also modified to be fully automatic, which is illegal without a stamp from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives.
