Feds: Men used bitcoin, darknet to hide sales of illegal drugs
WEST PARK — FBI agents, U.S. Marshals and U.S. postal inspectors raided a home in West Park on Tuesday and arrested two men on federal drug charges involving a sophisticated scheme to sell illegal drugs through cyberspace, feds say.
Luis Miguel Teixeira-Spencer, 31, and Olatunji Dawodu, 36, were taken into custody at around 10 a.m. without incident. Authorities confiscated items from the residence as part of their investigation into illegal drug sales on the darknet in exchange for payment in bitcoin cryptocurrency, federal authorities said.
Spencer and Dawodu conspired with others, not named in the indictment, to sell more than 400 grams of pills containing traces of fentanyl, a prescription-only, pharmaceutical-grade opioid painkiller 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the CDC.
To conceal their illegal drug sales, Spencer and Dawodu took payments in bitcoin cryptocurrency through darknet markets since February 2017, court records stated.
According to a federal grand jury indictment, Spencer set up accounts on the darknet, an online black market frequently used for anonymous criminal activity such as selling illegal drugs. Using variations of the alias johncarter7, Spencer advertised oxycodone M30 pills for sale with “pressed with just the right amount of fentanyl,” according to the indictment.
The pills were shipped by USPS priority mail across the U.S. from Florida and
Rhode Island.
Undercover detectives messaged johncarter7 in April 2019 and placed orders for the opioids. The payments for the drugs were made in bitcoin and transferred to a binance account — a cryptocurrency wallet — registered to Spencer. From there, investigators said they were able to get Spencer’s address, email and phone number. Spencer and Dawodu used a public storage unit in Davie to facilitate their illegal business activities, investigators said.
Spencer and Dawodu are facing charges of conspiracy to distribute 400 grams or more of a mixture and substance containing a detectable amount of fentanyl, records show.