West Side shop owner given 7 years in prison for selling synthetic weed laced with rat poison

One victim started urinating blood soon after smoking illegal synthetic pot he bought at a West Side convenience store.

Doctors initially thought it was kidney stones, but it was later determined he’d ingested high concentrations of rat poison, the victim testified Thursday in federal court. Wracked with pain and bleeding uncontrollably, he nearly died in the hospital. The ordeal cost him his job as a union carpenter and led to bouts of depression. Now nearly two years later, he’s still trying to get back on his feet.

“After having almost lost my life, I am now fearful of the unknown,” the man, identified only as Victim A, told U.S. District Judge Manish Shah in a hushed voice.

The damage caused to victims of synthetic marijuana — often referred to as K2 — was the focus of an emotional sentencing hearing for convenience store owner Fouad Masoud, who pleaded guilty last year to selling the illegal substance from his King Mini Mart on South Kedzie Avenue.

In sentencing Masoud to seven years in prison, Shah said the emergence of “greedy black-market profiteers” selling K2 was a “recipe for disaster” and likely contributed to a public health crisis that included dozens of hospitalizations in central and northern Illinois and at least two deaths.

While no deaths were tied directly to drugs sold at Masoud’s store, Shah said it was clear he was taking advantage of unsophisticated addicts who were looking for a cheap high.

“You didn’t know there was rat poison in it, but you also didn’t care what you were selling,” Shah said. “You didn’t care whether it was safe or healthy. ... It was just about money for you.”

Masoud, 49, pleaded guilty in September to drug conspiracy, admitting in a plea agreement with prosecutors that he sold up to 80 packages a day of unregulated synthetic pot that was often manufactured overseas and branded with names such as “Matrix,” “Crazy Monkey” and “Scooby Snax.”

In asking for a sentence of 10 years in prison, prosecutors said that over a 2½-year period beginning in late 2015, customers would line up outside the King Mini Mart every morning waiting for Masoud to arrive with a garbage bag filled with the illegal pot.

Masoud knew the drugs were banned and had even been cited for selling it before by the Chicago police. Employees told investigators he’d since kept the K2 hidden in a bucket buried in the ground behind the shop to avoid detection.

At least three customers — including the victim who testified Thursday — experienced severe symptoms after buying what was believed to be a “bad batch” of K2 from Masoud’s store, causing them to “nearly bleed to death,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing earlier this month.

The victims required blood transfusions and prolonged treatment to keep the poison at bay, including daily high-dosage shots of Vitamin K that cost nearly $400 apiece, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Hernandez wrote.

“Essentially they were being poisoned to death like rodents,” Hernandez said.

Many more victims likely got ill but were either unwilling or unable to testify, according to prosecutors.

Masoud’s attorney, Glenn Seiden, argued for a three-year prison term, saying “no nexus” existed between the rash of hospitalizations and drugs sold at Masoud’s store.

Seiden also noted that Masoud “risked his wealth and his health” to run his store in the disadvantaged Lawndale community for nearly 20 years.

Before he was sentenced, Masoud, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit and shackled at the ankles, made a brief statement to the court. He acknowledged that "maybe I got a bad batch” of K2 at some point but said that many more customers would have been sickened if it were as bad as prosecutors said.

“Only two people got sick. ... Where are the rest of them?” said Masoud, who has been in custody since his arrest in April 2018.

The Jordanian national, who will likely be deported once he’s done serving his sentence, did not apologize to several victims sitting in the courtroom gallery.

Masoud’s store came under investigation amid an escalating outbreak of K2-related sicknesses in 2018. At the time, nearly 100 people had reported symptoms, and the Cook County medical examiner’s office had confirmed that rat poison was found in the body of a 22-year-old Chicago man found dead in an Oak Lawn hotel room.

Meanwhile, after allegations surfaced about someone who had experienced adverse side effects after using synthetic pot purchased at King Mini Mart, an undercover officer was sent into the store and bought the drug. It was later found to contain rat poison, according to the criminal complaint filed against Masoud.

When authorities went to arrest Masoud at his Justice townhouse, he was carrying a paper grocery bag filled with $344,000 in cash. Police searched his home and recovered about 6.4 pounds of suspected synthetic cannabis labeled “Purple Giant,” according to prosecutors.

Two of Masoud’s employees, Jamil Abdelrahman Jad Allah and Adil Khan Mohammed, were also charged and agreed to cooperate with the investigation. Both pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.

Jad Allah told agents that customers — who sometimes ordered K2 by asking for “Starbucks” — started to complain in 2018 about the quality of the product, according to an investigative report by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration included in court records.