6 indicted in ‘dark Web’ case
Multimillion-dollar business operated from a gated Altadena area, prosecutors say.
Multimillion-dollar drug network was based in Altadena, prosecutors say.
A group of Southern Californians has been accused of operating a multimilliondollar drug distribution network on the “dark Web” from a gated community in Altadena, federal prosecutors said.
In an indictment unsealed in the Eastern District of California last week, authorities charged William James Farber, 37, and Bryan Antony Lemons, 29, both of Los Angeles, with conspiracy to possess and distribute a controlled substance and conspiracy to launder money.
Also charged with conspiracy to possess and distribute controlled substances were Richard Thomas Martinsen, 29, of Studio City; Michael Angelo Palma, 22, of Los Angeles; Michele Pickerell, 47, of Altadena; and Faysal Mustafa Alkhayat, 31, of Woodland Hills.
According to investigators, the group ran two underground drug distribution businesses. The first, PureFireMeds, operated on the dark Web market Silk Road. The second, HumboldtFarms, operated on AlphaBay from August 2013 to May 2017.
The dark Web is a part of the Internet that is not accessible by traditional search engines but instead requires specific software to access.
In the time it operated, the group completed more than 78,000 orders for marijuana, oxycodone, hydrocodone, psilocybin (also known as “magic mushrooms,”) Ecstasy, LSD, Xanax and ketamine, the indictment says.
The group assembled and mailed an estimated 1,000 packages a week from Pickerell’s home in La Viña, a 271-home gated community in Altadena. According to the criminal complaint, the security guard there was familiar with Pickerell and the other conspirators, whom Pickerell called her “boys.”
In the four years the network operated, it sold drugs for more than $7 million worth of bitcoin, the semianonymous digital currency, prosecutors said.
The bitcoin then was exchanged for cash through intermediaries, the criminal complaint said, including through an MIT student who told the Boston Globe in 2013 that the problem with the currency was its “reputation” with the black market economy.
The defendants would make cash deposits in a main bank account in amounts less than $10,000 to avoid federal reporting requirements and then withdraw money the same day in smaller amounts from other bank locations, officials said.