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       A drug overdose that killed a young mother in D.C. two years ago led authorities to a sprawling cross-country fentanyl ring and the seizure of more than a quarter-million pills and 30 firearms, federal prosecutors said Monday.

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       Charges were announced against 13 people from the D.C. area and California, adding to an indictment already filed against 13 other defendants. The charges include being members of a drug conspiracy. Some defendants face drug distribution and firearms charges. Officials said 23 of the 26 people under indictment are in custody.

       Officials said the drugs largely originated in Mexico and were smuggled into California. Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney for D.C., said the drugs were then transported into the District on planes or sent through the mail.

       “This was a conspiracy that flooded the District of Columbia with fake pills containing fentanyl,” Graves said at a news conference Monday. He said the blue pills were “dangerously marked” to resemble legally manufactured oxycodone.

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       Graves noted the spike in homicides in D.C. this year, adding that “we have had even more drug poisonings, and fentanyl accounts for almost all these poisoning deaths.” Graves was joined at Monday’s announcement by representatives from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and D.C. police.

       This month, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) declared a public emergency over the opioid crisis, directing city agencies to track overdoses more efficiently and to help outreach teams reach those in need. Opioid overdose deaths recorded by D.C. so far this year are on pace to surpass last year’s record of 461.

       “Fentanyl poisons our neighbors, steals our friends and family, and attracts violence that plagues our community,” D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith said during Monday’s announcement.

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       Many of the arrests announced Monday occurred last week, and the two dozen defendants are at various stages of their court cases. Several who were charged in U.S. District Court in D.C. have been ordered detained, and at least one has a hearing scheduled for this week. Two are challenging their detentions.

       The attorney for one of those defendants argued in a memorandum filed in court that prosecutors had based their case on messages exchanged through social media but lacked direct evidence of drug trafficking. The attorney described the text exchanges as vague.

       Graves said the investigation began in April 2021 after the death of 20-year-old Diamond Lynch, who lived in D.C. He described her as a young mother who was preparing for her son’s first birthday when she relapsed in her addiction recovery and contacted her old drug connection.

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       “What she got was a fake pill, like one of the million fake pills we have recovered during the course of the investigation,” Graves said Monday.

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       Paula Lynch, 55, said her daughter had graduated from McKinley Technology High School in Northeast Washington and enrolled at Delaware State University. She worked as a manager in retail.

       Cause of death: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

       She said Diamond Lynch had bought birthday decorations, then bought a single pill that she thought was Percocet for $30. “What happened to my daughter could easily happen” to others, Paula Lynch said; her daughter’s overdose “changed our lives forever.”

       Paula Lynch said her daughter had many attributes — sister, student, dancer, cheerleader, usher — but “had no chance to blossom as a mom.” She said Diamond Lynch became barely recognizable while using the drug. “Your loved one dies twice,” Paula Lynch said of fentanyl. “Once when they ingest it, and when it finally takes them for good.”

       Graves said Monday that the person who sold Diamond Lynch the lethal pill has been sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison after being convicted of conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute fentanyl. That defendant is not named in the new indictment announced Monday, and those defendants are not charged in connection with Lynch’s death.

       But Graves said the current case is a direct result of the investigation that started with Lynch’s overdose. He said investigators uncovered what they allege is a sprawling conspiracy that has led to recent indictments connected to D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee and California, with a nexus to Mexico.

       Under pressure to do more, Bowser declares public emergency on opioids

       According to court documents, authorities reviewed Instagram photos and messages that they allege detailed the conspiracy. They also said federal undercover agents in Los Angeles made drug buys of more than 12,200 pills that tested positive for fentanyl, and purchased 12 firearms.

       Inside a D.C. apartment in January, authorities said, they found 7,500 counterfeit oxycodone pills. Also in the apartment, they found the body of a central figure in the case who had been a target of the investigation.

       They said he had been killed by the combined toxic effects of fentanyl, codeine and oxycodone.

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