The Daily Observer London Desk: Reporter- John Furner
The Department of Justice said Tuesday it arrested nearly 300 people and seized unprecedented amounts of drugs and cash as part of a global takedown on fentanyl traffickers that focused on the darknet corners of the web.
Dubbed Operation SpecTor, the takedown was led by the FBI and involved eight foreign countries.
Agents arrested 288 people and seized 117 firearms, 850 kilograms of drugs — including 64 kilograms of fentanyl or fentanyl-laced drugs — and $53.4 million in cash and virtual currencies.
The probe centered on the darknet, a section of the Internet that can only be accessed via a special browser that masks users’ digital footprints.
Traffickers advertised brand-name drugs on the networks in exchange for cryptocurrency, yet the pills were often counterfeit and laced with fentanyl, according to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
“The drug traffickers are confident that by operating anonymously on the dark web, they can operate outside the bounds of the law,” he said. “They are wrong.”
Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid fueling the overdose crisis in America. President Biden and politicians of all stripes are under pressure from grieving families to crack down on the problem and disrupt international trafficking networks.
Roughly 70,000 of the 107,000 overdose deaths in the U.S. were linked at least in part to fentanyl in 2021, the most recent year for which complete data is available.
The U.S. government says nearly all of the fentanyl supply flows from Mexico, often in the form of counterfeit pills taken by addicted people or unsuspecting users. Families have told Congress that young people and others can access pills on the internet.
In an example from the new operation, Justice Department officials described a 19-year-old in Colorado who was an exceptional student, had a knack for languages and built computers in his spare time. Family members thought he was ordering computer parts in a series of packages that actually contained fentanyl purchased on the darknet, leading to his death from an overdose last year.
Justice Department officials said they used undercover agents and followed up on reported overdoses as part of its probe.
“Our message to criminals on the dark web is this: You can try to hide in the farthest reaches of the internet. But the Justice Department will find you and hold you accountable for your crimes,” Mr. Garland said. “We will continue to illuminate the dark web and we will bring to justice those who try to hide their crimes there.”
At the same time, he acknowledged the difficult nature of the investigations.
“There is a bit of a whack-a-mole problem here, and we are whacking as hard as we can,” Mr. Garland said.
The Justice Department in mid-April charged over two dozen members of the Mexico-based Sinaloa cartel, including top leaders, for their alleged roles in the illicit fentanyl supply chain.
The members included sons of Joaquin Guzman Loera, or El Chapo, who is serving a life sentence in Colorado.
On the same day, the Treasury Department announced sanctions against two companies and five people for their alleged involvement in providing precursor chemicals needed to make illicit fentanyl.
Notably, Mexico was not on the list of countries involved in the operation outlined Tuesday. U.S. officials say their neighbor has not been doing enough to beat the drug problem.
Mr. Garland said that “all of us can be working harder,” adding, “We need the cooperation of Mexico on all kinds of matters. We will continue to work on that problem.”
