A U.S. District Court judge in Portland on Monday sentenced a New York man to 24 months in prison for mailing fentanyl to Maine.
Tyler Dean, 49, sent an envelope by USPS Priority Mail Express in June 2020 from the Schenectady, New York, area to a home in Rockland using an alias, according to court records cited by the U.S Department of Justice in a news release.
The package’s recipient and their spouse died of accidental overdoses the day the package arrived.
Investigators used text and Facebook messages to confirm that Dean mailed the envelope and knew that he was sending a controlled substance but did not know what kind, according to the DOJ. Lab testing confirmed that the envelope contained fentanyl.
Fentanyl was listed as a cause of 78 percent of Maine overdose deaths in 2023, according to the December 2023 Maine monthly overdose report. The statistic includes fentanyl or fentanyl analogs, alone or in combination with other drugs.