Doctor charged with selling drugs to local DEA agents via Silk Road

Federal drug agents in Orlando spent the summer buying painkillers, sedatives and other drugs from the underground – and now defunct – website Silk Road.

It was on the virtual drug marketplace, authorities said, that a Delaware physician sold hundreds of prescription drugs illegally and shipped them to Central Florida, throughout the U.S. and to people in more than 15 other countries.

On Thursday, agents arrested the doctor, 32-year-old Olivia Bolles, near her home, and prosecutors in Orlando unsealed a 54-page criminal complaint detailing the allegations against her.

Bolles’ case is the first of its kind in Central Florida involving Silk Road, a website for global drug dealers and users who could sell and buy anything from cocaine to methamphetamine anonymously.

“Dr. Bolles was a respectable doctor by day and a drug trafficker by night when she went incognito on the underground website Silk Road to illegally sell highly abused pharmaceutical medications,” said Special Agent in Charge Mark R. Trouville of the DEA’s Miami division.

The arrest comes one month after federal agents shut down Silk Road and charged its founder, a 29-year-old former physics student from San Francisco, with building a drug empire with an estimated $1.2 billion in sales.

Orlando-based agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said Bolles, who was a pharmacy technician before earning her medical degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia, operated on Silk Road under the name “MDPro,” according to the criminal complaint. Bolles is not licensed to dispense controlled substances such as painkillers.

Federal documents show agents found more than 600 drug sales between MDPro and Silk Road users.

“Dr. Bolles’ greed became a concern for public safety, and now she will face the consequences of her actions,” Trouville said.

According to the criminal complaint, DEA agents bought oxycodone, Xanax, Adderall, hash oil and other drugs from “MDPro” from June to August.

When one of those orders arrived at an undercover address in Central Florida in June, an invoice for a “Sample Order” of “Sour Patch watermelon candy” was inside.

There was an envelope in the box that contained a sealed box of Sour Patch candy. Inside the box of candy was a plastic baggie containing four Oxycontin tablets, the complaint said.

In another order, a purchase of Valium was concealed as “Airheads” candy, and the box also included an invoice for a “Sample Order” of “Airheads.”

Other orders were disguised as Life Savers gummies and Jolly Rancher candies.

Agents reviewed Bolles’ bank accounts and her eBay account, which showed she bought items commonly used in drug manufacturing, including formaldehyde and products used to make hash oils, such as chloroform.

Agents searched Bolles’ home in Newark, Del., on Thursday. It wasn’t immediately known what authorities found, but her roommate Alexandra Gold, also a physician, was arrested on drug charges.

Bolles will be brought to Orlando for future court proceedings. If convicted of illegally distributing controlled substances, she faces up to 20 years in federal prison.

apavuk@tribune.com or 407-420-5735