South Shore fentanyl kingpin gets 32 years in federal prison

Yet another Greater Boston drug kingpin is shipping out to the federal pin — this time for nearly as long as he’s been alive.

U.S. District Court Judge William G. Young sentenced Aderito Patrick Amado, 34, of Brockton and Quincy, to 32 years in prison to be followed by a decade of supervised release.

Prosecutors say his drug trafficking organization, known as a “DTO,” pushed more than 12 kilograms of fentanyl, more than 11 kilos of fentanyl analogue — basically a homebrew of the extremely deadly opioid — more than three kilos of cocaine, more than 2 kilos of heroin and more than a kilo of crack. It took four indictments total to press all the charges against he and his three co-defendants, Erica Vieira, Neylton Fontes and Chaasad Cyprien

“Mr. Amado was the leader of an organization that pumped multiple kilograms of dangerous and deadly drugs into our communities, including fentanyl and fentanyl analogue,” acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy said in a prepared statement. “He will now have more than three decades in prison to contemplate his critical role in driving fentanyl addiction and contributing to overdose deaths through his wholesale and street-level distribution all in pursuit of the almighty buck.”

Prosecutors say that he was a leading drug trafficker in the South Shore area and saw his fortunes rise during the misery of the COVID-19 pandemic, all while on probation — and sporting a GPS ankle monitor for prior state-level offenses.

A jury convicted him in June in federal court in Boston on a medley of drug trafficking and conspiracy charges.

In all, prosecutors Kaitlin O’Donnell and Philip Mallard say he netted hundreds of thousands of dollars from his “sophisticated” drug trafficking organization that employed a network of burner electronics, “hydraulic presses, money counters, stash houses, rental vehicles, other vehicles bought in the names of third parties, commercial-grade drug paraphernalia, and firearms equipped with accessories ranging from a laser beam to high-capacity magazines” to market his wares to large-quantity middlemen pushers to street-level addicts alike.

Prosecutors successfully argued at sentencing for a harsher sentence than base guidelines would allow, applying sentencing enhancements for his stash houses and leadership of the large drug trafficking organization (DTO). They also wrote in their sentencing memo that a larger sentence was warranted due to Amado’s “ongoing enthusiasm for firearms despite being a well-established convicted felon” and his “brazen efforts to mislead the Court and jury through his trial testimony about his role in the DTO.”

Amado’s defense attorneys argued that he should be sentenced to no more than 15 years and that the “evidence submitted by the government to justify the enhancement is ambiguous at best.”

In his sentencing memo, defense attorney Peter Horstmann argued that the overarching drug conspiracy charge — the first count against Amado — is redundant with the underlying drug charges and to factor it in would be “double counting” the penalty.