B.C. men charged with operating crypto-funded drug ring on dark web
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Three Nanaimo males accused of working a cryptocurrency-funded drug trafficking ring on the darkish net are going through greater than two dozen drug fees.
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Kien Trung Pham, Kerry Chang, and Gordon Brooks have been arrested in February 2020 following a year-long investigation into a criminal offense group working in the dead of night net hawking a big number of illicit medication by a vendor that used the alias AlwaysOverweight.
“The darkish net is simply one of many instruments that organized crime makes use of to keep away from detection, and so police have to repeatedly evolve their technical capabilities to stem the stream of poisonous medication into our communities,” stated Supt. Richard Bergevin of the B.C. RCMP in a press release on Tuesday.
RCMP allege AlwaysOverweight used cryptocurrency and encrypted messaging functions to anonymously visitors medication, together with methamphetamine, oxycodone, cocaine, MDMA, Xanax, and fentanyl combined with different slicing brokers marketed as heroin.
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Through the investigation, the RCMP’s federal critical and arranged crime unit was capable of get by the group’s digital obstacles and recognized a Nanaimo deal with as the vendor’s bodily location. The investigation into the group’s on-line actions broadened to incorporate street-level drug offers, stated RCMP.
On Feb. 4, 2020, Mounties searched two Nanaimo houses. Police seized medication, packaging, mailing envelopes, money, pc and information storage units.
Pham was charged with 15 counts of drug trafficking and drug possession, whereas Brooks faces 14 fees. Chang faces one cost of trafficking a managed substance.
The three males are scheduled to look in Nanaimo provincial court docket on June 7.
chchan@postmedia.com
