A.J. Steinberger

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Highland Heights man was sentenced Wednesday to 12 years in federal prison for giving furanylfentanyl to a 19-year-old who overdosed and died in February 2016.

Alec "A.J." Steinberger, 22, pleaded guilty in August to causing the death of Laith Hudson, a North Collinwood resident and agreed to the sentence U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. imposed. Steinberger has said Hudson was his friend, though records and Hudson's mother have disputed this.

Federal prosecutors said Steinberger bought the drugs from the dark web and had them shipped to Northeast Ohio from China. A series of text messages prosecutors put in his indictment showed that Steinberger persistently texted Hudson to try the new, powerful drug that just arrived in the mail and that Hudson eventually acquiesced.

Oliver noted that Steinberger himself was an addict. He accepted the agreement reached by prosecutors and Steinberger's attorneys. He told Steinberger that "the public does need some protection from you right now" but that he does not believe Steinberger will offend again.

"It's a tragedy," Oliver said, addressing to the families of Hudson and Steinberger, seated on opposite sides of the viewing gallery. "There's no other way to describe this thing."

Oliver also ordered Steinberger, who nodded along to the judge's statements, to pay $10,548 in restitution to Hudson's family, which will cover the 19-year-old's funeral costs. He also recommended Steinberger participate in the most intensive drug-treatment program offered by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Steinberger is in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service.

The path from Hudson's death to Steinberger's plea took nearly a year and a half. His addiction, which came despite a loving family and good upbringing, has baffled his loved ones who had to watch his unraveling. Hudson's family was equally bewildered, and his mother Karin Hudson has said she is angry at a system that made it difficult to get her son the treatment he so desperately needed.

Laith Hudson

Amy Callahan, Hudson's aunt, read a letter to Steinberger's family during the sentencing that said Hudson was a "beautiful boy with a radiant smile, and people were drawn to him like a magnet."

After Hudson died, Steinberger said he panicked and deleted text messages between him and Hudson and changed his phone number. In what Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Cronin called a "disturbing" twist, Steinberger lied to Cleveland police and said a man named "Mitch" gave Hudson the drugs.

Meanwhile, Steinberger racked up another criminal case in Lake County and went to a rehabilitation facility in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to address his own opioid addiction. He was arrested there in April and, at a detention hearing in federal court in Louisiana, all but admitted to framing "Mitch" and to the charges against him.

When asked by a prosecutor at the detention hearing why he lied, Steinberger said, "I did because I was really bad on drugs. I don't really know why I said it, but when the marshals picked me up this time, I told the truth."

Steinberger said Tuesday that he would probably not have stopped had federal agents not arrested him. He said he wants to finish college, and his attorney Tom Shaugnessy said Steinberger has done work with universities and hospitals to talk about his problems to deter others.

"Addiction has really done a number on my life," Steinberger said.

Callahan said she doesn't want Steinberger's life destroyed, and hoped that he can reflect on his actions while prison and that a revelation "causes such a searing pain that it cleanses his pain and pushes him forward to a life worth living."

Steinberger's case is instructive because it shows how a new breed of dealers buy drugs from countries like China and sell them to a network of buyers who often don't really know what they're shooting into their veins or snorting.

He is one of several dozen suspected drug dealers that federal prosecutors in northern Ohio have charged with selling fatal doses of opioids. Authorities hope this tactic can be effective in combating the tidal wave of heroin and opioid deaths.

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