Texas drug gang indicted for laundering $50,000 in crypto 

A Texas drug ring has been indicted by United States Authorities for laundering $15,000 to $50,000 in cryptocurrency and selling about 12kg of meth disguised as Adderall pills.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio revealed in a press release that six men from Texas have been sentenced to prison for running a dark web operation involving the illegal distribution of drugs and laundering of illicit funds through crypto.

The press release was announced on Oct 8 and it contained details of the crime by the drug ring.

“Six Texans convicted as part of a large-scale dark web drug trafficking organization have been sentenced in federal court in Cincinnati. 

According to court documents, from July 2019 through December 2020, the co-conspirators distributed significant quantities of methamphetamine — pressed to look like legitimate Adderall pills — over the dark web. The defendants sold at least 11.98 kilograms total of methamphetamine in pills and laundered between $15,000 and $50,000 per month using cryptocurrency. The group shipped the drugs nationwide, including into the Southern District of Ohio, using the United States Postal Service. 

The defendants used the vendor’s name “Loverbois,” along with several other usernames, and averaged 20 orders per day.  

Court documents detail that Phung created and ran the Loverbois account(s) for much of the conspiracy period. He took orders online and obtained pills from Tran and Guzman. Phung also coordinated the receipt of cryptocurrency in exchange for the pills and laundered those proceeds. 

Guzman had a pill press and industrial mixer at his apartment in Houston, where Phung also lived for some time. Harris also lived in the Houston apartment, where he pressed his pills for distribution. Pray aided Guzman by helping obtain, pack, and ship the pills. 

Dang packaged pills for shipment and delivery and helped move and launder cryptocurrency. Dang laundered approximately $15,000 per month. 

The Loverbois online drug trafficking organization sold and shipped pills to undercover law enforcement officers in the Southern District of Ohio in a series of transactions.” , The US attorney’s press release reads in parts

Prison sentence  

The longest prison sentence among the six Texans went to Hung Ahn Huy Phung, 26, who was believed to be the brain behind the operation and ran the Loverbois accounts. Phung got 84 months in prison while his other accomplices got 60 to 75 months.

One of the Texans got five years of probation. The team ran out of luck when they unknowingly shipped drugs to undercover agents in the South District of Ohio leading to their arrest.

What to Know  

• The downside of the anonymous nature of crypto is that most times it can be used by bad actors to launder illicit money. Notorious tools like Tornado Mixer can be used to make it difficult to follow transaction trails.
• The dark web is an alternate web universe where all manner of illicit activities are carried out by bad actors.