This is a short follow up to my previous post Pharma-Master criminal complaint and warrant.
A man who was caught pressing fentanyl into knock-off roxies in Utah last month was trying to get out of jail before his trial begins, however the judge denied his release yesterday (Monday Dec 19, 2016) on some interesting grounds. The juicy part from the pretrial detention order document:
After reviewing the evidence in this case, the court finds that Defendant has not rebutted the presumption that he remain detained pending trial. Defendant points to his lack of a violent criminal history in support of release, but the court finds it less relevant than the allegations that he has been conducting a large-scale criminal enterprise on a daily basis for over a year. The nature of the charged offenses are serious and potentially life threatening to victims. In favor of his release, Defendant also points to a strong support network and parents who are willing to serve as third-party custodians. Although the court does not doubt that his parents would attempt to be good third-party custodians, the scope and reach of the alleged operations on the internet would be difficult for them to monitor. Moreover, Defendant has several contacts who have been working with him in his alleged illegal enterprise who could help him re-engage in his alleged operations. Defendant allegedly has several contacts who continue to receive packages of fentanyl for him from China as well as a co-conspirator who is "on the run." Moreover, Defendant argues that he lost the resources he had to conduct his alleged operations because the government seized his computers and over a million dollars in cash when he was arrested. However, there is no evidence that the computers and cash seized are Defendant's only resources. Defendant refused to disclose his finances to the Magistrate Judge and a blanket denial of access to any other resources is not credible. The court does not believe that any of Defendant's proffered evidence demonstrates that any type of pretrial supervised release could prevent him from re-engaging in his alleged prior operations at least to some extent.
Earlier this month, on December 7th, a grand jury handed down an indictment for the defendant for one simple charge:
Possession of Fentanyl with Intent to Distribute
Notice in the quoted text above, the judge indicates that there were also accusations that the defendant sold online. If this individual was Pharma-Master, either he was actually a competent vendor and encrypted his data, or the feds are completely incompetent, because they don't seem to think they had enough evidence to convince a grand jury to indict him for any other crimes, even though they did seize his computer. Strange at the very least because we know the individual was caught also pressing a Schedule IV substance, alprazolam.
PUBLIC DOCUMENTS (PDF):
If that is his only charge, I would bet that he has cooperated in some way (co-conspirator may be a hint at that) in order to currently only receive indictment for the one charge...and possibly pinned the alprazolam/bar manufacturing on his fall partner.
It sounds to me like this is going to be one of those precedent-setting cases for DNM fentanyl-pressing vendors.