The Justice Department said Tuesday that it had arrested 150 people from three continents, all of whom have been charged with drug trafficking and other criminal activities. The arrests were part of a large-scale international law enforcement operation aimed at illegal drug trafficking on the Darknet.
The FBI and its partners in Australia and Europe collaborated on an international online sting called Operation Dark HunTor, which targeted Darknet drug traffickers and other offenders in Australia, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The Darknet or Darkweb is a section of the internet that cannot be indexed by search engines and requires special browsers to access. Because law authorities can't monitor the Darknet, it's filled with websites that sell illegal goods and services.
During their 10-month operation, law enforcement authorities recovered about $31.6 million in cash and virtual currencies, as well as approximately 234 kilos of narcotics, including amphetamines, cocaine, opiates, and MDMA.
Investigators also allegedly seized more than 200,000 tablets of ecstasy, fentanyl, oxycodone, hydrocodone, and methamphetamine, according to the Justice Department.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Tuesday that 90% of the tablets recovered in the United States included hazardous counterfeit opioids and drugs. She added that the operation is meant to expose those that are using the internet to sell their illegal products.
Operation Dark HunTor has been described by officials as the greatest seizure in the history of the Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement agency. Out of the 150 people apprehended, 65 of them were from the United States.
Two of those arrested were Texas residents Kevin Olando Ombisi and Eric Bernard Russell Jr. Both have been charged with selling counterfeit pharmaceuticals, distributing prohibited narcotics, and money laundering in a 10-count indictment.
They are accused of distributing and mailing a combination of opioids to other jurisdictions, including Tennessee, and of disguising the hazardous narcotics as more common medications and selling them to clients.
According to court records, the two men used the dark web to distribute methamphetamine-laced Adderall tablets in return for cryptocurrencies. To imitate the medicine supplied by Teva pharmaceuticals, some of the tablets they delivered were stamped with the FDA-recognized "AD."
During the COVID-19 pandemic, illegal activity on the Darkweb has only risen as more people utilize it to get narcotics that often include unsafe doses of fatal chemicals.
