Fairbanks man’s fatal fentanyl overdose leads to life sentence for California dealer

A California man has been sentenced to life in federal prison for sending fentanyl pills to Alaska that caused a Fairbanks man’s death four years ago.

Chief U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason handed down 48-year-old Junior Gafatasi Tulali’s sentence on Tuesday, according to U.S. Attorney for Alaska S. Lane Tucker’s office. A jury convicted Tulali in April of distributing fentanyl resulting in the unnamed man’s October 2020 death, along with an “enhanced statutory penalty” requiring a life sentence.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Alana Weber and Carly Vosacek prosecuted the case against Tulali. In a joint interview Thursday, Weber said that Tulali originally bought the pills that killed the victim for $5 apiece in Los Angeles. He then offered to sell them to a local dealer in Fairbanks for $10 a pill.

“Tulali then shipped 500 of these counterfeit Oxycodone pills to Fairbanks. They actually contained a mixture of fentanyl and acetaminophen, which is Tylenol,” Weber said. “That Fairbanks distributor sold the pills to several local dealers. One of those dealers sold two pills to the victim, and two days later, his father found him deceased of a fentanyl overdose.”

According to a sentencing memo filed by Weber and Vosacek, the victim bought the pills for $60 apiece. Investigators tracked the pills, which were also linked to two other non-fatal Fairbanks overdoses, back through the local dealers and then to Tulali.

At the time of his death, according to the memo, the victim had just turned 22 and was “working two full-time jobs and dedicated to getting sober for his newborn son.” He had relapsed during his recovery, and abused prescription drugs.

“However, (his) battle with addiction to prescription pills is not what killed him – the substance that caused his untimely death was fentanyl disguised in a pill indistinguishable from a legitimate pharmaceutical drug which he purchased from a trusted friend,” the prosecutors wrote.

The case also highlights the profit motive of dealers who send drugs to far-flung areas of the nation like Alaska. According to the sentencing memo, Tulali had previously served nearly two decades in federal prison for trying to smuggle cocaine base on a commercial flight to Hawaii – a crime he admitted was driven by his desire to make more money for the drugs in a remote market.

A sentencing memo from Tulali’s attorney portrayed him as a family man who did not know the pills he purchased contained fentanyl, asking that he serve his time in California near his wife and son. But the prosecutors’ memo said those same ties emphasized his greed.

“Tulali did not distribute fentanyl out of desperation,” the prosecutors wrote. “Instead, the reason (the victim) was killed is because Tulali wanted an extra $5,000 to supplement his legitimate income.”

Although overall U.S. fentanyl overdoses and police seizures of the drug are falling, Alaska has bucked the national trend. According to the state Department of Public Safety, Alaska overdose deaths rose 44.5% last year to 357, with three-quarters of them involving opioids. A state drug report shows that the quantity of fentanyl seized in Alaska more than tripled last year, from 27 kilograms in 2022 to 83 in 2023.

Vosacek, who is based in Fairbanks, said dealers’ drive to make more money sends drugs to distribution points like her city.

“Fairbanks is still a very small community, but it’s technically a regional hub,” Vosacek said. “So people are trying to get drugs into Fairbanks so they can distribute them to even smaller communities and villages where they go for even higher prices.”

Those prices, Weber said, can reach $100 to $200 per fentanyl pill in rural communities off Alaska’s road system like Dillingham and Savoonga.

Vosacek said the case against Tulali was driven by prosecutors’ aim to “disrupt the flow of dangerous drugs into the community.”

“In this case, we know that the defendant was intending to ship additional shipments to Fairbanks, and we were able to disrupt those further shipments,” she said. “So we saw this as a huge impact on the community, being able to prevent those further distributions.”

Vosacek said the case also underscores the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s “One Pill Can Kill” education campaign, focused on the danger unlabeled fentanyl adds to taking street drugs of all kinds.

“You might take one pill and be completely fine, and you might take a half a pill and you might overdose and die,” she said. “There’s no consistency in terms of potency, and it’s incredibly dangerous to risk engaging in this activity.”