NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A New Jersey man charged with selling large quantities of fake Xanax on the dark web and laundering over $2 million using Bitcoin plead guilty in the New York State Supreme Court on Wednesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced.
According to his guilty plea, Chester Anderson operated two dark web storefronts under the name “sinmed” where he sold and shipped thousands of counterfeit Xanax pills and other drugs to 43 states from March 2016 to April 2019.
Anderson acted with two co-conspirators, Jarrette Codd and Ronald MacCarty, who assisted by getting equipment and manufacturing the drugs, officials said.
The trio shipped more than 1,000 packages from New Jersey across the county, using fake return addresses which identified the senders as several Manhattan businesses, including multiple law firms and a real estate agency.
Both Anderson and MacCarty created a shell company called Next Level Research and Development in order to purchase more than 1,000 kilograms of microcrystalline cellulose which is the primary ingredient used to make pharmaceutical tablets. MacCarty also owned a cellphone repair store called “The Wireless Spot” which was used to purchase a pill press, a powder mixer, and “punch dies” used to imprint “Xanax” labels on alprazolam pills.
The three men also laundered $2.3 million by accepting cryptocurrency as payment to load on to pre-paid debit cards and then they collectively withdrew more than $1 million from ATMs in Manhattan and New Jersey.
The scheme was eventually shut down after undercover Manhattan D.A. investigators purchased roughly 10,000 alprazolam tablets, as well as ketamine and GHB from the sinmed storefronts. They also seized 8,000 tablets by intercepting packages.
Investigators were able to obtain a warrant for the three men’s property during which authorities seized the largest number of pills in New Jersey State history which included about 600,000 alprazolam tablets, roughly 500 glassines of fentanyl-laced heroin and large amounts of methamphetamine, ketamine, GHB, and more. Manufacturing items, as well as firearms and cryptocurrency, were also recovered.
“As technology evolves, so does our office, and drug traffickers who think they can use the dark web to conceal their illicit activity will be caught and brought to justice,” said District Attorney Bragg. “But we know that cybercrime is not just confined to the hidden corners of the internet – it often spills out into more traditional street crime that has plagued far too many of our neighborhoods. We are laser-focused on dismantling these operations to rid our streets of dangerous drugs and the violence that often comes with them.”
Anderson was convicted on four counts, including operating as a major drug trafficker, and is scheduled to be sentenced on June 22.
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