Authorities Also Uncover $630,000, Rifles, Bitcoin, Pill Press at Lake House, Apartment Outside St. Louis
DEA: BEWARE COUNTERFEIT PILLS DUE TO UNKNOWN CONTENTS
By Josh Mitchell
Editor
River Mississippi News
SULLIVAN, MISSOURI — A man who sold millions of counterfeit Xanax pills through a secret Internet channel will spend two years in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday.
The fake Xanax pills were sold over the “Darknet” by Brandon Adams, who was also ordered by a federal judge in St. Louis this week to forfeit $1 million and pay a $10,000 fine, federal authorities said.
Adams, who is 27 years old, will also be on supervised release for three years once he’s released from his 24-month prison sentence. He had already pleaded guilty to the three felony drug charges involving the online sale of counterfeit narcotics and admitted selling “misbranded” pills on the Darknet from around 2019 to 2021 under the name “BenzoBoys.”
The drug Adams mainly sold was the powerful anti-anxiety medication Xanax (or its generic form), which are benzodiazepines. The Drug Enforcement Administration describes “benzos” as “depressants” that can “produce hypnosis.”
Adams used a “pill press” that imprinted pills with markings nearly identical to real Xanax pills, authorities said in a DOJ news release this week.
Adams’ operation was run out of a “secluded lake house outside Sullivan, Missouri,” the release stated, adding, “customers placed orders using an encrypted messaging service and paid with cryptocurrency.”
The pills were mailed or placed at “dead drop” sites for customer pickup, and authorities said some customers bought the pills for “re-sell.”
A court-approved search of Adams’ lake house and apartment in Sullivan, Mo. turned up “the pill press, tens of thousands of misbranded pills and bags labeled alprazolam, the active ingredient in Xanax, and clonazolam, a derivative benzodiazepine.”
The search also uncovered “about $630,000 in cash and two rifles at his apartment and seized about $330,000 in Bitcoin.”
“Brandon Adams was one of the most prolific manufacturers and distributors of counterfeit Xanax pills in the United States,” Chris Crocker of the FBI St. Louis Division stated in the news release.
Countetefit pills can be very dangerous because they “often” contain unknown substances, Crocker noted.
Joseph Dixon of the DEA’s St. Louis Division added that he and others within the agency are committed to dismantling and destroying pill mills that “hide in the shadows and operate in the dark corners of the web.” The dangers of fake pills should discussed by families, he added.
Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service assisted in the investigation of the case, which was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Ware.
