A San Bernardino man pleaded guilty Monday, Aug. 12, in federal court in Los Angeles in a fentanyl distribution case connected to the deaths of four people in January 2020.
Under an agreement with federal prosecutors, Jason Saha, 38, pleaded guilty to two counts of knowingly and intentionally possessing, with intent to distribute, fentanyl, a synthetic opiate that has fueled a national epidemic in recent years resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
Saha initially was indicted in November 2022 with four counts of knowingly and intentionally distributing fentanyl that resulted in the death and serious bodily injury of Jessica Filson, 29, and her boyfriend Nicholas Castillo, 30, both of Redlands, as well as San Bernardino residents Donald Kelly, 33, and Cannon Farris, 42.
The deaths associated with the Saha case underscored an alarming increase in the toll fentanyl was taking nationwide, prompting the formation of activist groups and a push for tougher laws and prosecutions, at both the state and federal levels, against defendants who peddle the drug to people who die after taking it.
Under his plea agreement, Saha faces up to 40 years in prison. He is scheduled for sentencing on March 10, 2025, before U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II.
Retired San Bernardino police Sgt. Steve Filson and wife Cheri Filson with a moon-shapred urn filled with ashes of their daughter, Jessica Filson, in Highland on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. The family helped start Victims of Illicit Drugs, or VOID, after their daughter died from fentanyl-spiked cocaine in 2022 in Redlands. (Photo by Terry Pierson, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)
“He is now a convicted fentanyl trafficker who is responsible for the deaths of four people and the serious injury or another,” said Steve Filson, Jessica Filson’s father, of Saha following Monday’s court proceedings. “Our family defers to the wisdom of the court in establishing a sentence.”
Filson, a retired San Bernardino police sergeant, co-founded Victims Of Illicit Drugs, or VOID in June 2021 to help educate parents and others about the dangers of fentanyl — and pressure lawmakers as well as federal and local prosecutors to do more.
Reached by telephone Monday, Saha’s attorney, federal public defender Young Joon Kim, declined to comment.
Saha remains out on bail until his sentencing, a U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesperson said.
According to Saha’s plea agreement and interviews with San Bernardino police, Saha purchased the fentanyl-laced cocaine from a woman he met at the Third Street Tavern in Highland on Jan. 21. He then sold some of the drugs to Filson and Castillo in Redlands.
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Saha then met up with Kelly and Farris at an apartment complex on East Pumalo Street in San Bernardino, where the three did the drugs together. Saha, according to San Bernardino police, passed out and did not awake until the morning of Jan. 23 — nearly a day later.
After Saha called his mother, paramedics pronounced Kelly and Cannon dead on arrival at 7 a.m. Saha was taken to a hospital by ambulance, Carrington said.
The woman who supplied the fentanyl-laced cocaine to Saha has not been charged with any crimes, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
