An Arlington man is going to prison after pleading guilty to distributing fentanyl-laced pills designed to look like common prescription medications — a deception that prosecutors said could be deadly to unwitting consumers.

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       Taurean Venable, 37, was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff after being convicted last fall of conspiracy to distribute more than seven kilograms of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, which prosecutors noted has become the most common type of drug involved in fatal overdoses in the United States.

       100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 12 months during the pandemic

       “Fentanyl imposes a significant harm on society,” prosecutors wrote in a memo urging a 12-year sentence for Venable. “It is an addictive and dangerous drug that destroys the lives of users, and has far reaching consequences on the users’ families, friends, and communities. The resultant cost on society is tremendous. … The defendant engaged in the conspiracy with little, if any, regard for the harms to society and the users, and did so for his own financial gain.”

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       A defense attorney for Venable did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.

       According to the sentencing memo, police stumbled into the major fentanyl conspiracy while they were investigating a stolen vehicle. They arrived at an Arlington apartment with a search warrant in June 2020 seeking pertinent records — instead they found a suspicious white powder blanketing items all throughout the home, according to the memo.

       Inside a blender on the kitchen counter, police found more than a thousand grams of fentanyl, or a fentanyl-laced substance

       The apartment was home to one of the several co-conspirators in the case, and police identified Venable among them.

       According to the criminal complaint, Venable assisted the co-conspirators in pressing the illicit pills and then distributing them to customers throughout Arlington and Washington. Prosecutors say the several conspirators used the pill presses to manufacture thousands of pills resembling legitimate prescription medications, such as Oxycodone.

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       Instead, prosecutors say, they were laced with fentanyl and other cutting agents — meaning purchasers may have “a difficult time discerning if they are obtaining legitimate prescription medication or counterfeit pills.”

       “It is difficult to quantify the impact that the amount of fentanyl (between 4 and 12 kilograms, with 7 kilograms seized in a single day) involved in this offense had on communities in this District and elsewhere,” prosecutors wrote in the sentencing memo.

       Prosecutors also say police recovered more than $23,000 from Venable’s home, along with expensive jewelry, “all of which was tied to his involvement in selling narcotics,” they said in the sentencing memo.

       Venable had a “lesser role” in the conspiracy compared to others, prosecutors said; two co-conspirators have already been sentenced to prison as well, one for 72 months and the other for 151 months. But prosecutors said Venable’s considerable criminal history of several convictions for drug distribution caused them to seek a longer prison term for him.