In an ongoing case, the second defendant pleaded guilty to the charges against him, which includes the distribution of cocaine and heroin on the dark web.
On August 2, 2016, law enforcement authorities in the United States arrested Abdullah Al Maswali, a 31-year-old Yemeni national, and Chaudhry Ahmad Farooq, a 24-year-old Pakistani national, both residing in Brooklyn, New York. The two defendants were indicted on charges of distributing heroin and cocaine, and conspiracy, Acting United States Attorney Phillip A. Talbert announced on August 11, 2016.
According to the court documents, the two defendants, using the vendor names “Area51” and “DarkApollo,” were large-scale heroin and cocaine distributors on the darknet marketplace AlphaBay. However, a quick Grams search showed that the suspects sold not just only on AlphaBay, but on Dream, and Oasis too. When Nucleus and Agora existed, both men sold on those marketplaces as well.
Additionally, thoroughly examining the two vendor profiles, and based on some posts on Reddit, there is a huge possibility that the two accounts were run by the same person. Even the nature of the products sold and the quality of the substances was the same. DarkApollo’s account even tells viewers to check out the products on Area51’s account. Even worse, at one point, their accounts were mirror images of each other. While it seems they were not the same person, they clearly were working together, hence the federal conspiracy charge. Area51 had his own darknet marketplace set up, according to one of his posts on Reddit.
The complaint stated that Al Maswali and Farooq accepted orders for heroin and cocaine on AlphaBay, and then mailed the narcotics from post offices in New York to customers throughout the United States. According to police information, all payments were conducted exclusively in bitcoins. In May 2016 undercover investigators conducted two purchases of heroin from “Area51,” which were delivered to a post office box in the Eastern District of California. Postal records revealed that Al Maswali purchased the postage for the two heroin parcels mailed to law enforcement authorities and that Farooq was involved in “other mailings”. Investigators discovered that the encrypted email addresses used by the vendors “Area51” and “DarkApollo” was associated with actual Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts used by Farooq.
“Initial analysis of DARKAPOLLO and AREA51’s public PGP key indicated that both keys were registered to the same email address: [email protected] A social-media search for the phrases Adashc3d31 and Adashc3d resulted in the discovery of a Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook account belonging to someone identified as ‘Ahmed Farooq’ or ‘Ch. Ahmed Farooq’ (Hereinafter referred to as FAROOQ). The Facebook profile belonging to FAROOQ indicated that he resided in Brooklyn, New York,” special agent John Rabaut wrote.
The case advanced when on January 17, 2017, Farooq pleaded guilty to conspiring to traffic heroin. According to the plea agreement, the 24-year-old admitted to selling 636.5 grams of heroin on the darknet marketplace AlphaBay in exchange for $145,807 in BTC. Recently, Al Maswali also pleaded guilty to charges against him, including the distribution of heroin and cocaine, and conspiracy.
“This case is a product of an investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration, with assistance provided by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the IRS Criminal Investigation, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Grant B. Rabenn and Ross Pearson are prosecuting the case. This case is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF). The OCDETF program was established in 1982 to conduct comprehensive, multilevel attacks on major drug trafficking and money laundering organizations. The principal mission of the OCDETF program is to identify, disrupt, and dismantle the most serious drug trafficking and money laundering organizations and those primarily responsible for the nation’s drug supply,” the press release on justice.gov goes by about the law enforcement agencies participating the police action.
If convicted, Al Maswali and Farooq could be sentenced to a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison along with a $1 million fine. The court date to sentence Al Maswali was set on July 24, 2017, and Farooq on May 15, 2017.
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