Years after bust of Massachusetts-based dark site that used Bitcoin to sell drugs, judge orders one of the men involved to forfeit Mercedes, serve prison term
It’s a drug conspiracy for the modern age: a three-man operation that manufactured cocaine, MDMA, Xanax and other drugs in a rented office in Massachusetts, sold the drugs on the dark web using cryptocurrency and shipped them to customers across the United States.
For his role in the complex drug-trafficking operation, Allante Pires, a 25-year-old Brockton man, faced the consequences in federal court in Boston on Friday. He was ordered by Judge Rya W. Zobel to forfeit his 2013 Mercedes E sedan, serve 28 months in prison and undergo three years of supervised release, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
The sentencing came about three months after Pires pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges that federal prosecutors brought against him and his partners in the drug-trafficking operation, Binh Thanh Le and Steven McCall, both of Brockton. All three men ran “EastSideHigh”, a vendor website on the Dark Network, more commonly known as the Dark Web. Their site advertised cocaine, MDMA, Ketamine and Xanax for sale, according to authorities.
Le, the 25-year-old head of the operation, was already sentenced in federal court in March to eight years in prison and three years of supervised release. More interestingly, he was ordered to surrender more than 59 units of the prominent Bitcoin cryptocurrency, a deposit representing more than $1.1 million, as well as $114,680 in cash, of which $42,390 came from the sale of a 2018 BMW M3 and other items he owned, including a pill press and currency counter, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
McCall, 26, pleaded guilty to his role in the conspiracy on June 28 and is scheduled to be sentenced on September 28, according to prosecutors.
The three men were indicted in June 2019 for their use of dark web markets to advertise various controlled substances for sale. As part of their operation, Le would order wholesale quantities of the illegal drugs mainly from sources in Canada and Europe. He, Pires and McCall would then process and manufacture the drugs in an office space that Le rented in Stoughton. After receiving orders and payment via Bitcoin, the men would eventually ship the drugs to customers across the United States, authorities said.
The law enforcement operation organized to break up the drug-trafficking ring, which the US attorney’s office noted was “highly sophisticated”, was large, involving at the federal level US Customs and Border Protection, the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Postal Service. Inspection service. At the state and local level, Massachusetts State Police and Brockton, Norwood and Stoughton police also assisted.
During the investigation, the various agencies involved seized more than 19 kilograms of MDMA, nearly seven kilograms of ketamine, nearly one kilogram of cocaine, and more than 10,000 counterfeit Xanax pills. Investigators also found a computer with the “EastSideHigh” vendor page open, numerous packages containing MDMA and ketamine, various shipping and packaging materials and a pill press from the three men’s Stoughton office.
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