A U.S. professor, Daniel Taylor, pleaded guilty to masterminding a fentanyl distribution conspiracy in Lubbock, Texas, after the Drug Enforcement Agency accused him of exploiting his professorship and marketing expertise to build a clandestine network of narcotics sales and distribution.

Mr Taylor worked as an associate professor of marketing and supply chain management at Texas Tech University’s Rawls College of Business.

“This defendant exploited the knowledge and credibility he gained as a university professor to build a fentanyl trafficking operation that put lives at risk throughout the Lubbock community,” said special agent in Charge Joseph B. Tucker, DEA Dallas Field Division.

Mr Taylor, 51, endangered many lives, many of whom overdosed after ingesting ‘Ghost’ and ‘Pink Flamingo’ – drugs that contained white fentanyl powder, bromazoloam and benzodiazepine.

He faces up to 40 years’ imprisonment and a $5 million fine in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Lubbock Division, which will sentence him on a yet-to-be-disclosed date.

The case is before U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix.

“Taylor utilised his education and background in supply chain management to build and operate his own supply chain of dangerous narcotics in the Lubbock area, primarily dealing out of the Executive Inn,” U.S. attorney Ryan Raybould said.  “With his pink flamingo and ghost branding of fentanyl, he also drugged prostitutes to fuel his own sexual desires.  I expect—and we will certainly be asking for—a severe prison sentence to hold him accountable for the harm he caused our community.”  

Investigations found that Mr Taylor often engaged the services of prostitutes and paid them with narcotics. He also had an obsession with photographing the women in lingerie and perfume he kept in his home.

When the DEA got a warrant to search his home, they saw pictures of women in lingerie and the recipe for Ghost and Pink Flamingo, which includes cocaine and fentanyl.

The Pink Flamingo was so potent that it led to multiple cases of overdose, to the extent that one of Mr Taylor’s victims was intubated for almost three days at the University Medical Centre hospital in Lubbock after taking it. The doctor said the individual “was experiencing imminent, life-threatening deterioration as a result of an opioid overdose”.

A DEA laboratory analysis of the drugs found at Mr Taylor’s showed they contained crack cocaine, methamphetamine, ketamine, fentanyl, bromazoloam, and ecstasy.

Mr Taylor had told the prostitutes he intended to buy a house where they could all live together, the DEA agents heard.