Man gets 11 years for distributing fentanyl that led to Mac Miller’s death

LOS ANGELES (KTLA) — A man has been sentenced to nearly 11 years in prison after pleading guilty to supplying counterfeit fentanyl-laced pills to the drug dealer who sold them to rapper Mac Miller before the star died of an overdose, officials announced Monday.

Former West Los Angeles resident Ryan Michael Reavis pleaded guilty last year to a single-count superseding information charging him with distribution of fentanyl.

Reavis was sentenced to 131 months in federal prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

He is one of three people charged in Miller’s overdose death. Stephen Andrew Walter, 48, of Westwood is set to be sentenced in the coming weeks, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. A case against 30-year-old Cameron Pettit of West Hollywood is pending.

Reavis, who moved to Arizona in 2019, distributed counterfeit oxycodone pills to co-defendant Pettit on Sept. 4, 2018, officials said.

He admitted to knowing that the pills contained fentanyl or some other controlled substance, according to the Department of Justice.

Shortly after Reavis supplied him with the fentanyl-laced pills, Pettit gave them to the 26-year-old rapper, whose real name was Malcolm James McCormick.

Reavis allegedly distributed the counterfeit pills to Pettit at the direction of co-defendant Walter.

Miller got the pills about two days before he suffered the fatal drug overdose on Sept. 7, 2018.

The star’s personal assistant found him unresponsive in his Studio City home, and paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.

The rapper died from an accidental overdose due to a combination of alcohol and drugs, including fentanyl, the L.A. County coroner’s report said at the time.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is around 100 times stronger than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Just two milligrams can be lethal, depending on a person’s body size, tolerance and past use. 

Synthetic opioids like fentanyl are the primary driver of overdose deaths in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.