Two alleged Buena Park dealers are facing criminal charges following what law-enforcement officials described as one of the largest drug busts in county history, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office announced on Wednesday.

Buena Park officers recovered 821 pounds of methamphetamine, 189.7 pounds of cocaine and 20.5 pounds of fentanyl pills during the March 17 bust, according to a  statement from the DA’s office statement.

The drugs were found in a minivan that police pulled over after a driver left a Buena Park home, the DA statement said. Law enforcement officials declined to release any further details about the drug bust or why they pulled over that vehicle.

“Millions of unsuspecting people have the grim reaper looking over their shoulder and they have no idea how close they actually are to dying from taking a single pill,” District Attorney Todd Spitzer said. “Fentanyl is cheap, it’s easy to get and it is killing our children, our co-workers, and tens of thousands of innocent Americans who don’t have to die. Drug dealers don’t care about you or your loved ones – they only care about their bottom line and making as much money as possible.”

DA Spokeswoman Kimberly Edds said that based on the combined amount of drugs seized, the Buena Park bust is the largest one in Orange County in the past 16 years.

Edgar Alfonzo Lamas, 36, and Carlos Raygozaparedes, 53, both have been charged with multiple felonies counts related to the bust including possession and transportation for sale of a controlled substance as well as sentencing enhancements tied to the amount of drugs allegedly found.

The two men pleaded not guilty to the charges during arraignments on March 21, court records show, and both remain in custody in lieu of $5 million bail. Both men are scheduled to return to court on June 7.

Local leaders and law enforcement officials have identified the fentanyl epidemic as Orange County’s “most significant long-term health crisis,” as Sheriff Don Barnes described it during a public hearing earlier this year.

The synthetic opioid has gone from causing 4 percent of drug-related deaths nationally in 2014 to more than 70 percent in 2021, when more than 100,000 people died from fentanyl related poisonings or overdoses. Locally, the number of fentanyl related deaths in Orange County grew from 36 in 2016 to 636 in 2021, a 1600 percent increase, according to county statistics.

Law enforcement officials say 2 milligrams of fentanyl is enough to kill someone, which would mean a single sugar-packet’s worth of the opioid would pack 500 lethal doses. And fentanyl is much cheaper and more potent than drugs such as heroin and morphine.

“With fentanyl in an estimated 40 percent of street drugs, it’s not a matter of if but when someone you know and love dies from fentanyl,” Spitzer said in his statement. “We have to continue to do everything we can to combat this deadly drug epidemic and save lives.”

Late last year, Spitzer and his counterpart in Riverside, DA Mike Hestrin, announced a new crackdown on fentanyl through policies calling for dealers who sell fetanyl-laced drugs to face murder charges.

Under the new policy, prosecutors are seeking to have an admonishment added to plea deals requiring dealers to acknowledge that fentanyl is in street drugs and can be deadly. Then, the prosecutors say, if a dealer is involved in another fentanyl sale that results in death, second-degree murder charges could be filed.

On the state level, lawmakers have been wary of legislation that would stiffen penalties for fentanyl dealers, hoping to avoid what they view as mistakes from the “War on Drugs” era when studies have shown tougher sentences did little to deter traffickers and unequal sentencing patters often targeted people of color.

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