Buckets Of Xanax Seized In Massive Dark Web Drug Bust, DA Says

NEW YORK — Manhattan prosecutors accused three men Tuesday of running stores on the dark web that shipped drugs to dozens of states in exchange for millions of dollars in cryptocurrency.

Buyers could put Xanax, ketamine and other drugs in digital shopping carts and even leave customer reviews through the underground online storefronts that Chester Anderson ran under the screen name "sinmed," prosecutors said.

Anderson and two others — Jarrette Codd and Ronald MacCarty — sent more than 1,000 drug-filled packages to buyers in 43 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia through their illicit business, often using New York City businesses as the return addresses, authorities say. They're also accused of laundering more than $2.3 million in cryptocurrency they received as payment.

The trio, from New Jersey, faces drug and conspiracy charges after authorities nabbed 420,000 counterfeit Xanax pills largely stored in big orange buckets in the largest pill seizure in New Jersey history, along with other drugs and pill-making equipment, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said.

"What we recovered as a result of this case are pills that are designed to cause addiction," Vance said Tuesday. "... This isn’t something that can be lightly ignored."

The business, which Vance said started operating in 2016, apparently thrived on the dark web, an internet accessible only through a special browser that serves as a haven for illegal activity.

The "sinmed" stores ran on the Dream Market, a dark web marketplace similar to Amazon, Vance said. Once they got paid, the men converted the cryptocurrency to prepaid debit cards and together withdrew more than $1 million from ATMs in New Jersey and Manhattan, according to prosecutors.

After getting a tip about suspicious ATM activity in 2017, prosecutors say Manhattan investigators went undercover and bought about 10,000 tablets of alprazolam, also known as Xanax, along with Ketamine and GHB, commonly known as a date rape drug.

Along with the roughly $3 million worth of Xanax, Vance said, raids of the men's properties and vehicles in New Jersey yielded methamphetamine, LSD, ketamine, GHB, steroids and 500 glassine bags of fentanyl-laced heroin stashed inside a desktop computer.

"These were often sold in … envelopes like you’d get with papers from a bank or lawyer and in those envelopes were a thousand tablets of Xanax," Vance said, adding that the men often used the return addresses of real law firms and other businesses in an apparent attempt to evade law enforcement.

Investigators also found evidence that the trio manufactured their own pills, prosecutors say. Anderson and MacCarty bought more than 1,000 kilograms of microcrystalline cellulose, a substance ued to make pills, through a shell company and MacCarty's Asbury Park cellphone repair store was used to buy a powder mixer, a pill press and so-called punch dies to label pills with the Xanax brand, prosecutors said.

Anderson, Codd and MacCarty were due to be arraigned Tuesday afternoon on charges including money laundering, conspiracy and criminal sale of a controlled substance, Vance's office said. They could face up to 25 years in prison on the most serious charge, the DA said.

It's still uncertain exactly who sinmed's customers were, Vance said. Regardless, it's crucial for prosecutors to beef up their online operations to properly tackle the threat of cybercrime, the DA said.

"You can’t fight crime anymore if you’re just fighting crime the old way," Vance said.