Metairie man admits supplying co-worker’s fatal heroin
Posted on Jan 31, 2010 in Courts, Drugs, Local Issues
By Drew Broach, The Times-Picayune January 29, 2010, 11:45PM A Metairie man who supplied the heroin that killed his restaurant co-worker during Carnival 2008 has pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy and distributing the drug. Matthew S. Olvany, 30, faces as much as 20 years in prison, three years' probation and a $1 million fine, although maximum penalties are rare in federal court. In fact, he and his prosecutors, assistant U.S. attorneys Maurice Landrieu and William Quinlan Jr. signed a plea agreement calling for a 15-year prison sentence. The final decision will be up to U.S. District Judge Mary Ann Vial Lemmon,who accepted Olvany's guilty plea Thursday. Zac Moser.jpgZac MoserOlvany's stash led to the fatal overdose of Zac Moser, a Destrehan High School graduate, drummer and one of seven people ages 16 to 27 to die in New Orleans of drugs in a five-week period. Moser, 21, and Olvany both worked at Emeril's Delmonico restaurant. Moser had just been promoted from waiter to bartender but pulled just one shift in the new post before his death. That was Feb. 3, 2008, the night of the Super Bowl and the Bacchus parade that rolled down St. Charles Avenue in front of the restaurant. Court records say Moser left the restaurant and traveled with three co-workers to Olvany's house at 1201 Vegas Drive. Olvany regularly sold heroin in $50 to $100 amounts, in part to support his own heroin consumption habit, according to court records, and that night he broke up a supply in his bedroom and handed over some. The four co-workers headed to a convenience store parking lot and ingested some of the drug, then hit a couple of bars on St. Charles Avenue not far from Delmonico. Moser ended up at one co-worker's apartment in New Orleans and was found dead the next morning in the bathroom, a syringe, spoon and cigarette lighter near the body. Soon FBI agents was on the case. They reviewed the calls on Moser's cell phone and interviewed his acquaintances, and two months after his death agent James Hurley Jr. went undercover to Olvany's house and bought a half-gram of heroin from him for $100. The FBI arrested him the next day.