Man Sentenced To 10 Years after 2016 Darknet Bust

In 2016, Benjamin Bricker was arrested for distributing cocaine purchased from the Darknet. The 26-year-old man pleaded guilty to the criminal counts and has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Bricker was accused of being in possession of cocaine valued at 4 to 200 grams.

According to the law, the punishment for this type of crime is a sentence of 5 to 99 years. The accused can also be sentenced to life imprisonment if found guilty.

On June 24, 2016, Benjamin Bricker was arrested after client who works with the police managed to buy 15.4 grams of cocaine from him. Information says that Bricker was paid using a traceable note. He was arrested at his home. The search warrant declared that Bricker sold drugs.

The Lubbock police have successfully arrested many Drug traffickers from the Darknet after they noticed that people died of an overdose in Lubbock. Fentanyl trafficking on the street came to the awareness of the police in 2015. A number of deaths were recorded in Lubbock in 2016 when a 55-year-old woman died in April 2016, followed by another death in a week after. The medical examiner reported that each of the death was related to fentanyl.

Fentanyl is largely trafficked from the Darknet, and this awareness has made the police to trace people from the online market.

Fentanyl trafficking is a worldwide headache, and it is arguably trafficked from the Darknet, more than any other drug due to the fact that it can be sent on a mail in small quantities. Drugs are sent to users by mail upon a request on the Darknet.

After the police suspected Benjamin Bricker to be a Darknet drug trafficker in 2016, they searched his home which led to the seizure of cocaine, ecstasy, hallucinogenic mushrooms, LSD, marijuana, and amphetamines. According to reports, 13.4 grams of cocaine was found in his bedroom. This served as strong evidence against him in the court of law, as drug trafficking warrants a strict punishment.

According to a search warrant released in September last year, Bricker ordered drugs from the Darknet and was delivered to him by mail. Unfortunately for him, the parcel was picked up by his former landlord. The landlord then called the police after suspecting an unusual substance in the parcel. The report further says that investigators asked a permission to open the FedEx package which their drug-sniffing dog had already alerted the availability of drugs in the parcel as well.

The Lubbock police similarly arrested a man last year for playing the same role as Bricker in illegal drug distribution. Sydney Lanier was assisted with two women and the niece of the former mayor of Lubbock in the drug distribution.

There was a similar charge returned by a grand jury in October, and that indictment has been dropped by the prosecutors. It included a deadly weapon which could have affected his parole eligibility. There was also an indictment in December of second-degree felony counts. This was in possession of methamphetamine, LSD, and cocaine with the intention to distribute. Upon a plea, all those charges were dismissed by the court.

It is not clear whether Bricker also had agents who assisted him to distribute the drugs. The warrant reports that the drugs which were found after the search were in dosage units. The officer who authored the warrant stated a revelation of a new trick used by the drug peddlers. “Dealers separate their newly ‘cut’ narcotic product into small dosage units to sell at a higher profit,” stated the warrant.

The search did not only produce drugs from the home of Bricker. Items such as a drug ledger, a shotgun, semi-automatic handgun, rubber bullets, a counterfeit money of $100 and over $10,500 were retrieved by the police. The amount of money is suspected to have come from the selling of the illegal drugs.

Aside the Arrests, Authorities are Implementing Measures to Fight against the Drug overdose in Lubbock

The arrests are being made, and the medications to neutralize the effect of opioid overdose crisis are being distributed by the government. Any measure that helps to fight against drug overdose in Lubbock is being implemented by authorities. Mark Kinzly and Charles Ray Thibodeaux are helping to distribute Naloxone which will help halt the negative effect of drug abuse. Kinzly said: “We are sending the medication to all over the state of Texas,” Kinzly says. “We’ve distributed well over 10,000 doses of Naloxone, with a documented well over 400 reversals and rescues with this, all with no help of the people that should be helping.”