Davie pair accused as opioid drug lords

Feds crack open China link

More details — including a glimpse of their lavish lifestyle — emerged Thursday about a South Florida couple’s alleged involvement with an international drug trafficking ring that brought synthetic opioids to American shores

When agents arrested Davie residents Anthony Gomes, 33, and Elizabeth Ton, 26, this month they found $150,000 in cash, a $900,000

home, a Maserati and a boat. Feds say they are still looking for the couple’s plane.

Despite their pricey possessions, agents learned they’d reported only a combined $12,500 in wages, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jodi Anton.

Gomes and Ton were involved in money laundering and distribution as part of a scheme to sell drugs over the internet, which led to four deaths in North Dakota and Oregon, authorities said. If convicted on charges of conspiracy to buy and distribute drugs that caused fatalities, they could face life in prison.

Their arrests are part of the U.S. Justice Department’s first-ever indictments against Chinese manufacturers of fentanyl and fentanyl analogs — the synthetic painkillers blamed for surging overdose deaths around the country.

The ring moved more than 400 grams of fentanyl and more than 100 grams of related drugs to states including Florida, Oregon and North Dakota.

Fentanyl was the leading cause of overdose deaths in Florida during the first half of last year, causing 704 deaths, according to the latest data available from the Florida Medical Examiner’s Commission.

Gomes used email and an encrypted application to communicate with a drug trafficker working out of a prison in Canada, Anton said. Together they coordinated purchases and shipments of fentanyl and related drugs, as well as wire transfers of money to Canada and China, she said.

In one email, Gomes described the negative feedback he was receiving for a shipment of “H” — slang for heroin — that caused three people to overdose. He wrote that his customers didn’t think the drug was actually heroin because of what it looked like when they mixed it with water, according to Anton.

“It’s crazy because the first week everybody loved it,” he wrote, according to Anton.

An email sent by Ton said she didn’t want Gomes to deal with “fent products,” according to Anton.

Ton’s attorney denied the email was sent by his client. Gomes’ attorney said it’s not clear that Gomes or Ton sent the emails even though they may have come from their accounts.

“Just because someone sends an email doesn’t mean that it comes from the person identified as the sender,” said Gomes’ attorney BarryWax. “It’s not uncommon for emails to be hacked or spoofed these days.”

The government also did not produce evidence that Gomes ever actually received any drugs, Wax said.

At a detention hearing in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale Thursday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Patrick Hunt ordered Ton and Gomes to remain in pretrial detention to be moved to North Dakota ahead of trial.

Hunt sided with U.S. attorneys who argued the couple could present a danger to the community if released and are at risk of fleeing.

The drug ring operated from January 2013 through August 2016 with organizers in the U.S., Canada and China, according to an indictment.

The alleged kingpin of the international drug trafficking ring, Jian Zhang, AKA Hong Kong Zaron, is accused of distributing at least 3,000 grams of drugs including fentanyl analogs, records show.

Zhang ran Zaron Biotech and manufactured fentanyl and similar drugs in at least four labs in China, records show.

Much of the fentanyl that ends up on the black market in South Florida comes from Chinese labs marketed to drug traffickers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration report.

Zhang and a second man arrested in September, Xiaobing Yan, are the first Chinese nationals the Justice Department has designated among the most significant drug trafficking threats in the world, said Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, in a news release.

So far, 21 people have been indicted as part of the investigation, according to a press release.

As of March 1, China banned fentanyl and several variants of the drug. Authorities are hopeful the ban will lead to a decrease in the drug’s availability in the U.S.