Erie fentanyl dealer gets nearly 6 years for peddling 'worst drugs' as part of conspiracy

The precise number of fentanyl pills that Peter D. Gambill Jr. sold on the streets of Erie will probably never be determined.

But based on wiretaps that investigators used to indict him in federal court in Erie a year ago, Gambill dealt 1,450 to 1,500 fentanyl pills in February and March 2022.

That was the period when Gambill was under surveillance as the FBI investigated a 25-defendant drug ring, one of the largest conspiracies of its kind to be broken up recently in northwestern Pennsylvania. The ring stretched to Central America, Puerto Rico, Arizona and Florida, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Gambill was accused of being part of the ring.

During one tapped phone call, on March 14, 2022, Gambill told his supplier he had needed a week to sell 1,000 pills.

"It's taking me a week to get a thousand off, ya feel me?" Gambill said, according to court records.

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He undoubtedly sold more pills over his career as a dealer.

Of the period in which Gambill sold 1,000 pills, "that was a slow week for him," the prosecutor on his case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Sellers, said in court.

Gambill will serve a lengthy sentence for selling the drugs that the U.S. Attorney's Office was able to itemize — the 1,450 to 1,500 fentanyl pills as well as cocaine totaling about 2 kilograms, or 4.4 pounds.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter sentenced Gambill to five years and 10 months in federal prison and four years of supervised release. Gambill had pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to traffic in fentanyl and cocaine.

Judge sentences dealer within guideline range

Gambill is an Erie resident with a prior record and his own drug addiction, according to court records. He faced a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years and a maximum possible sentence of 40 years.

The recommended sentence under the federal sentencing guidelines, which take into account a defendant's prior record, was five years and 10 months to seven years and three months.

Gambill's lawyer, Stephen Sebald, asked for a sentence of no more than five years. Sellers asked for a sentence within the guideline range.

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In sentencing Gambill within the guideline range, Baxter noted the harm that cocaine and particularly fentanyl has caused in Erie and Erie County, where the number of drug-related deaths hit 122 in 2022, just shy of the record-high 124 in the county in 2017, according to the county Coroner's Office. A surge in the use of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, has fueled the rise of the drug deaths.

"These are the worst drugs," Baxter told Gambill. "These drugs are the hardest to break."

By sending him to prison for nearly six years, Baxter said, she hoped to deter others from dealing drugs and get Gambill help to beat his addiction while incarcerated.

The sentence, she said, is meant to "break the cycle of drugs and keep drugs out of the hands of this community."

Defendant apologizes for dealing fentanyl

Sebald, Gambill's lawyer, said his client deserved a sentence of no more than five years despite "the scourge of fentanyl across the United States." He said Gambill was not a high-level operative in the conspiracy but was selling drugs to get money to survive.

"No evidence was presented, nor exists, of him living a lavish lifestyle," Sebald said in a sentencing memorandum. "Rather, he has struggled financially, seeking to support his family while funding his addiction. Mr. Gambill has nothing to his name ... except debt."

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He said Gambill wants to counsel young people when he gets out of prison.

Gambill apologized in court. The single father of two children, ages 1 and 4, said he intended to turn his life around in prison.

"I am just hoping for the better," Gambill said to Baxter. "This does not define me as a person. I will be a productive, hard-working member of society when I am released."

Stiff sentences for those convicted in Erie drug case

Gambill's sentence is the latest example of the stiff penalties that face the defendants who are convicted in the 25-defendant conspiracy. Gambill is listed as the 16th defendant in the indictment, returned in May 2022. The U.S. Attorney's Office alleges the top defendants were most responsible for running the drug ring.

The defendants charged in the highest levels of the case are accused of trafficking in as much as 220 pounds, or about 100 kilos, of powder and crack cocaine that originated in Costa Rica and was shipped from Puerto Rico to Erie from January 2020 to May 2022. The conspiracy was also tied to Florida, according to the government.

The U.S. Attorney's Office put the street value of the cocaine at as much as $3.2 million and said gangs distributed the drugs on Erie's streets.

The lead defendants — they include Eric Suarez Robles, of Orlando, Florida, and Victor Felix Ogando DeLeon, of San Juan, Puerto Rico — are still being prosecuted as some of the lesser defendants resolve their cases.

Gambill is among the five lesser defendants who have pleaded guilty or have arranged to plead guilty. He was connected to another aspect of the drug conspiracy — the trafficking in a total of 15,000 fentanyl pills mailed to Erie from Arizona in late February and early March 2022.

The defendant charged with mailing the pills is Vincent A. Feliciano, 32, an Erie resident who pleaded guilty to two felonies and was sentenced to a mandatory minimum federal prison term of 10 years in February. The 10-year sentence also fell within the recommended range of the sentencing guidelines.

Feliciano and Gambill are the only defendants to be sentenced in the case.

Feliciano is listed 11th in the indictment — five places above Gambill. He supplied some of the fentanyl pills that Gambill sold in Erie, according to court records. The pills, known as "blues" because of their color, were disguised to look like legitimate oxycodone pills.

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Gambill was "intercepted on multiple occasions discussing blue fentanyl pills with Vincent Feliciano," Sellers, the prosecutor, said in a sentencing memorandum for Gambill. The memo refers to the wiretaps.

The discussions with Feliciano included references to specific amount of pills and to "the block," a residence in the 1200 block of East 21st Street where surveillance cameras captured Gambill selling drugs, according to the memo.

On March 14, 2022, according to the memo, Gambill told Feliciano how many fentanyl pills he had sold, saying, "It's taking a me a week to get a thousand off, ya feel me?"

The high cost of trafficking in fentanyl, other drugs

In the sentencing memo, Sellers highlighted the "pernicious influence" of fentanyl. He also focused on how profitable trafficking in the drugs could be for everyone from members of the cartels — typically in Mexico — who make the fentanyl to the dealers like Gambill who eventually sell it to users.

The cartels could sell the fentanyl for 15 cents to 25 cents per pill at the border with Mexico, Seller said in the memo. He said Gambill could buy the pills for $4 to $5 each from a distributor, and sell the pills to the "end users for as much as $10-20 per pill."

"Every step along the way," Sellers said in the memo, "the producer, trafficker and distributor of these fentanyl pills has either doubled or quadrupled their profit off every individual sale, all the while sapping the lives and livelihood of our country and our community, our nation and our neighbors."

In the case of Gambill, Sebald, his lawyer, said he knew that he faced repercussions for his role in the conspiracy — no matter how many fentanyl pills he sold.

"He realized," Sebald said in court, "that there was a price to pay here."

Contact Ed Palattella at epalattella@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ETNpalattella.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie fentanyl dealer gets nearly six years for peddling 'worst drugs'