Staff report
A traffic stop by Kern County Sheriff’s deputies Wednesday led to a narcotics arrest involving Approximately 51,000 suspected Fentanyl pills with an estimated street value of $255,000.
Deputies from the canine unit conducted a traffic enforcement stop on Wednesday, March 31, in the area of South H Street and Panama Lane Bakersfield.
Deputies contacted the driver, later identified as Jose Mario Quintero Beltran, 31, of Bakersfield, and a 17-year-old passenger, according to a KCSO news release.
Deputies obtained consent from Beltran to search the vehicle and located several thousand suspected Fentanyl pills in the rear passenger compartment of the vehicle.
Due to the quantity of the suspected Fentanyl pills, detectives assigned to the Kern County-High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (KC-HIDTA) responded to the scene and took over the investigation. During the investigation, detectives wrote a search warrant for Beltran’s residence in the 800-block of Townsley Av