A 38-year-old man agreed to plead guilty to supplying counterfeit fentanyl-laced pills to the drug dealer who sold them to rapper Mac Miller before the star died of an overdose, officials announced Wednesday.
Former West Los Angeles resident, Ryan Michael Reavis, is pleading to a single-count superseding information charging him with distribution of fentanyl, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California.
Reavis, who moved to Arizona in 2019, distributed counterfeit oxycodone pills to co-defendant Cameron James Pettit, 30, of West Hollywood on Sept. 4, 2018, officials said.
He admitted to knowing that the pills contained fentanyl or some other controlled substance, according to the Department of Justice.
Shortly after Reavis supplied him with the fentanyl-laced pills, Pettit gave them to the 26-year-old rapper, whose real name was Malcolm James McCormick.
Miller got the pills about two days before he suffered the fatal drug overdose on Sept. 7, 2018.
Miller died from an accidental overdose due to a combination of alcohol and drugs, including fentanyl, the L.A. County coroner’s report said at the time.
His personal assistant found him unresponsive on his bed in his Studio City home. He was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.
Reavis allegedly distributed the counterfeit pills to Pettit at the direction of co-defendant Stephen Andrew Walter, 48, of Westwood, who last month agreed to plead guilty to one count of distribution of fentanyl.
Both Walter and Reavis are expected to plead guilty in the coming weeks before a U.S. district judge in Los Angeles.
The case against Pettit is still pending, according to the Department of Justice.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is around 100 times stronger than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Just 2 milligrams of fentanyl can be lethal — depending on a person’s body size, tolerance and past use.
Synthetic opioids like fentanyl are the primary driver of overdose deaths in the country, according to the CDC.
The number of overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids — mainly illicitly manufactured fentanyl — climbed 55.6% between 2020 and 2021.
