Paso dealer sentenced to 14 years for selling fatal fentanyl to teen 

Three years after he knowingly sold fentanyl-laced pills in the name of Percocet to a 19-year-old who died from taking one, Paso Robles resident Timothy Wolfe is about to serve 14 years in federal prison.

On Sept. 11, Los Angeles U.S. District Judge John Walter also ordered the 26-year-old to pay almost $26,000 in restitution to the family of the victim, Emilio Velci. Wolfe is currently free on a $150,000 bail bond and must surrender to the Federal Bureau of Prisons by Oct. 2. He signed a guilty plea agreement with federal prosecutors on May 24.

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• File Photo Courtesy Of Cammie Velci
• JUSTICE In 2020, 19-year-old Emilio Velci of Paso Robles fatally overdosed on a counterfeit pill laced with fentanyl that dealer Timothy Wolfe knowingly presented as Percocet. Now, Wolfe is about to serve 14 years in federal prison.

Velci purchased three blue pills he believed to be Percocet on March 8, 2020, to help with wisdom teeth pain. The teenager took one of those pills the same day and placed the other two on the coffee table. The next morning, his brothers and roommate found Velci dead. The guilty plea agreement Wolfe signed identified him as the person who sold Velci the pills.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency classifies fentanyl as a synthetic opioid that's 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine. While it's used in health care, the cheap product is often illegally added to pills and drugs like heroin to increase potency or is disguised as highly potent heroin.

According to the California Department of Public Health, fentanyl-related overdose deaths in the state have been "increasing at an unpredictable pace." Latest data from the California Overdose Surveillance Dashboard shows that San Luis Obispo County's age-adjusted fentanyl overdose death rate per 100,000 residents is roughly 38 percent higher than the state's rate.

The government's sentencing position document filed on Aug. 31 referenced a police interview with Wolfe on March 9, 2020.

"Defendant [Wolfe] admitted that he was 'pretty sure there's fentanyl' in the pills that he sold because he knew 'people who buy them' and he has 'a group of friends who like to take those type of pills and they have said they've taken like half and they just feel fucked up,'" the document read.

It also detailed the interaction between Wolfe and Velci, who's identified in the document as "E.V." Wolfe originally offered to sell Velci Oxycodone after he overheard the 19-year-old talking in a Paso Robles restaurant about Xanax. He gave Velci his Snapchat details to arrange the future sale. But when they met in the restaurant on March 8, 2020, Wolfe sold him pills he claimed were Percocet.

"E.V. died as a result of fentanyl intoxication caused by the pill that defendant sold to E.V.," the document read. "In his police interview, defendant admitted that he knew of someone overdosing and dying after taking pills sold by defendant's supplier."

Wolfe told law enforcement that he knew the counterfeit pills "did not look real."

A backpack found in Wolfe's house on March 10, 2020—the day after Velci died—contained a digital scale and a plastic bag holding 1.59 grams of Xanax, 0.56 grams of baclofen, and 0.79 grams of promethazine.

"The day that he sold the fatal pills to E.V., defendant told someone that he planned to sell 20 more pills the following day," the document states.Δ