Drug dealer gets five years

Good customer service on ‘Dark Web’ tripped him up

When Chrissano Leslie went before a judge to be sentenced on Tuesday, his defense argued that he was not a big-time drug trafficker, just a street-level dealer who happened to peddle heroin, fentanyl and other drugs online via the “Dark Web.”

Instead of standing on a neighborhood street corner, prosecutors said Leslie hid out on a high-tech cyber street corner and used a sophisticated online marketplace, which they said is like “an anonymous eBay” for criminals.

Senior U.S. District Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley said he was most concerned about what Leslie was selling because of the recent spike in heroin and fentanyl abuse.

“People are overdosing and dying,” the judge. “The word has to go out … that if you do get caught [dealing drugs], the consequences are very severe.”

Just like any trader, criminals who sell their drugs on the secret cyber marketplace depend on positive customer feedback and good ratings online to attract new clients and get repeat business, prosecutors said.

Leslie, 26, of Miramar, did well: He had a 98 percent positive feedback rating online.

And it was his commitment to customer service that tripped him up, investigators said.

Though much of the reason for creating the “Dark Web” is to allow criminals and their customers to try to make themselves untraceable and conceal their identities behind layers and layers of online encryption, Leslie delivered his drugs via the U.S. Post Office’s priority mail.

When a drug-buying customer complained that one of Leslie’s drug packages had not been delivered, Leslie logged on to the postal service’s online tracking feature to try to find the parcel.

Agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA] snagged Leslie by tracing the computer he used for that more oldfashioned online transaction back to him. They were able to prove that someone had used the internet service at his Miramar home to check the status of one of the packages, prosecutors said.

Some of Leslie’s customers were undercover DEA agents who bought drugs from him during their monthslong investigation last year, records show.

Agents later placed a new order and secretly followed Leslie to a Hollywood post office where he shipped their order and four other packages that contained drugs for other customers, court records show.

Leslie was arrested in July at his home and later pleaded guilty to four federal charges of drug-dealing, money-laundering conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. He admitted he used a variety of online aliases, including “owlcity,” when he traded on several “Dark Web” marketplaces. He also admitted he sold a wide variety of drugs, including anti-anxiety pills, fentanyl, “China White” heroin, cocaine and flakka.

Sentencing guidelines, based on the offenses and the amount of drugs involved, recommended 7 ¼ to 8 years in federal prison. But Leslie’s attorney Robert Trachman argued Tuesday that it would be “overly harsh” to lock up Leslie for that long. He suggested four years in prison.

Most of the evidence about how much drugs Leslie sold online came from a transaction log that Leslie kept at his home, the lawyer said. And though the log showed Leslie was involved in about 1,000 transactions, the defense said most of those deals were for very small amounts of drugs, about three pounds of illegal substances and 1,100 pills sold over several years.

Prosecutor Frank Maderal recommended five years and three months in prison, saying that Leslie, and other people who trade on the “Dark Web,” need to be deterred.

“It’s an incredibly difficult thing to police because anybody with access to a computer and a mailbox can become a drug dealer,” Maderal said. He said customers who might be afraid to buy drugs on a real street corner may feel less intimidated about buying online.

More than a dozen family and friends crowded into the courtroom to support Leslie. Several, including his mom and his wife, told Judge Hurley that Leslie was a hard-working and very intelligent young man who made a bad mistake.

Leslie told the judge that he felt very ashamed that he had used his intelligence and directed his energies into criminal activities.

Leslie, a Jamaican citizen who lived in South Florida most of his life, said he lost his work permit and green card after an arrest for possessing a small amount of marijuana and returning to Jamaica to care for his grandfather. He said he resorted to drug dealing online because he thought it was “either [do] that or starve.”

The judge sentenced Leslie to five years and 10 months in federal prison and warned him there is a high likelihood that immigration authorities will deport him after he serves his punishment.