A 38-year-old Washington state man has been sentenced to six years in federal prison in connection with a 2022 Bloomington fentanyl bust law enforcement called one of the biggest ever in the Upper Midwest.

Marcus Trice (Courtesy of the Bloomington Police Department)

Marcus Trice, of Lakewood, Wash., pleaded guilty to a federal drug trafficking charge earlier this year after police found 109,000 fentanyl pills weighing more than 24 pounds in his Bloomington hotel room.

The individual drug bust exceeded all seizures of fentanyl pills by a Minnesota-Wisconsin drug task force in the prior year, according to Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges. In the entirety of 2021, a total of 63,000 pills had been seized by law enforcement in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Hodges said.

Police had initially come to the hotel during the early morning hours of Aug. 31, 2022, as they investigated suspected financial fraud and arrested Trice, according to the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office. Trice was suspected of using another person’s identity to pay for the room.

Law enforcement learned Trice had flown from Seattle to Minneapolis the night before and while searching his belongings found eleven large vitamin bottles wrapped in clothing inside his suitcase, according to the U.S. Attorney.

Pills found in the luggage of Marcus Trice, according to Bloomington police. (Courtesy of the Bloomington Police Department)

Within the bottles were more than 100,000 round blue fentanyl pills marked with “M-30.” Law enforcement suspected the pills to be counterfeit oxycodone.

Trice was first charged in Hennepin County on Sept. 1, 2022, with first-degree possession with intent to distribute and credit card fraud, but on Sept. 20 was charged in U.S. District Court with one count of possession with intent to distribute fentanyl.

Trice entered a guilty plea to the federal drug trafficking charge on Jan. 25 this year.

On Tuesday, Minnesota District Court Judge Michael J. Davis sentenced Trice to six years in prison followed by five years of supervised release.

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