A Hollywood woman was convicted Tuesday of running a profitable drug delivery business in her apartment and a jury found she was responsible for supplying fentanyl, which caused multiple drugs in 2020 and 2021.
Mirela Todorova, 36, has been on trial since last month and is accused of leading an operational prosecutor known as “Uber, but used for drugs.” She was convicted on nine counts, including three drug distribution charges that caused “severe physical damage” in three non-lethal dose overdoses.
After the judge was ordered to remove himself from a court in downtown Los Angeles earlier Tuesday for disturbing prosecutors’ rebuttals in an ending argument, Todorova responded ruthlessly without betraying any emotions as she read the unanimous jury.
Authorities said they were initially warned in 2020 when Beverly Hills resident Ray Mascolo was found dead after reportedly buying fentanyl liquid oxygen-containing pills from a delivery driver in Todorova.
Three overdose survivors testified at the trial in downtown Los Angeles. Two of them, along with several disgruntled clients, repeatedly warned Todorova throughout 2020 and 2021 that she was selling dirty drugs, according to text messages obtained by the Drug Enforcement Bureau.
But, her former delivery driver, Kather Sei, said at the trial that she ignored their concerns about keeping profits again and again.
“It’s not something I signed up for,” SEI said. Sei said he was pleading guilty, and they pleaded guilty to drugs intended to be distributed. “People are sick. People are hurt.”
In addition to the fentanyl distribution count, a minimum sentence of 20 years was sentenced to prison, and Todorova was also found guilty of selling methamphetamine, cocaine and ecstasy, engaged in conspiracy and made false statements to the authorities.
DEA agents searching for Todorova’s apartment said they found several plastic bowls containing colorful pills and powders – next to them, packaging materials and kitchen scales and chalk residues. Ziploc cash bags marked with amounts are stuffed into bedside drawers and scattered on the floor.
Agents Final Seizure from property Drug caches including cocaine, MDMA, ketamine, mushrooms, and various pills and capsules, including discolored oxycodone, which tested positive for fentanyl. They have also confiscated nearly $9,000 in cash and Todorova’s iPhone, which prosecutors say is stocking “a daily magazine about a diary of a drug addict running a drug business.”
Evidence from Todorova’s Imessage and WhatsApp accounts suggests she sent her regularly updated drug menu to drivers and clients, directing SEI how to cook drugs in an apartment and asking other delivery drivers to be efficient in order to maximize profits, estimated at about $790,000.
Prosecutors said that by connecting her phone with several “work phones” used by her employees via iCloud, she said she was “warned about her business” even though she regularly traveled between the U.S. and Mexico to boost her pet Jaguar.
Todorova took a stand in her defense, rejecting the idea of her orchestrated plot, instead playing the supporting role opposite her ex-boyfriend Javier Lopez, who also allegedly sold drugs in Hollywood at the same time using the same phone number and several identical delivery drivers.
Prosecutors said Monday that DEA agents failed to contact Lopez to provide him with a trial subpoena and insisted that his alleged involvement in the conspiracy did not negate Todorova’s guilt.
Todorova testified that she met Lopez, a self-proclaimed club promoter, more than a decade ago when she first started having a party in Hollywood.
“I was attracted by his personality and the way he knew him and was at the center of attention,” Todorova said. She added that it was very exciting to be at the city’s hottest nightclub with Lopez, adding, “like the girls who haven’t been out for a while in her 20s.”
Todolova said that when Lopez’s friend first offered cocaine, she politely refused, fearing she would become addicted. But for a few years she was a semi-rule drug addict, then Lopez’s occasional delivery driver. She said that despite this, she always thought the business was his.
“In Ms. Todorova, Lopez found a relaxed prey,” Todorova’s attorney Charles Brown wrote in a last-minute motion on Sunday.
“She is young, attractive, obviously smart, but has a neurodevelopmental disorder that makes her socially naive, socially isolated and emotionally starved to death by love and connection, all of which makes her particularly vulnerable to abuse and manipulation.”
But Todorova’s former delivery driver and client testified that she didn’t answer anyone. She mentioned a lot about “My Business” and “My Driver” in many words. In a 2018 message, she told supplier Lopez to work for her.
As for overdose, Brown noted at the trial that all three victims in the case had taken other drugs or had alcohol on the same day as the cattle they bought from Todorova. He said this substance has “synergies”, so when pointing out the cause of excess, “the equation is not easy.”
But laboratory tests showed that a victim of overdose had attribution of fentanyl in his system as well as cocaine and benzodiazepines (usually sold as valium or xanax).
In the text message, Todorova confirmed to clients that she looked like “Perc 30s” or Oxy Blues in fentanyl pills. She said they were $30 each.
Todorova studied in a Bulgarian immigrant in Canada before moving to Newbury Park in the early 2000s, and his mother, Margaret Todorova, testified during the trial. Todorova is working on a career in biotechnology before she moved to Hollywood in 2020.
Even though Todorova was stuck on the track of her ex-boyfriend, her mother said she never stopped proposing that she would return to school.
