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Waterloo man pleads guilty to selling ecstacy

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Drug Enforcement Administration file photo of MDMA pills.

WATERLOO | A Waterloo man who pleaded guilty to selling ecstasy bought the drug from sources in Europe using the Silk Road online marketplace, according to court records.

Adam Lawin, 25, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute MDMA, a drug commonly known as ecstasy or Molly, on Monday in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids. He remains in custody pending sentencing and faces up to 20 years behind bars.

Another person indicted with Lawin, 22-year-old Benjamin Walker, is scheduled to appear in court later this month.

According to court records, authorities found more than 1.38 kilograms of MDMA when they raided the basement of his father’s home where he lived on April 26. They also located a draft of a book Lawin was writing that covered computer encryption, the online drug market and the virtual currency known as Bitcoin.

Authorities also discovered a book on manufacturing LSD as well as cost sheets for chemicals used in the creation of LSD, court records state.

Prosecutors said Lawin began using Silk Road to obtain MDMA as early as January 2012, importing the pills from Great Britain and Belgium. The first parcels went to his address, but he later enlisted his friends, routing the packages through them in exchange for cash or a small cut of the drug, court records state.

Lawin and Walker then distributed MDMA in the Waterloo and Cedar Falls area, records state.

Police began to catch on in the summer of 2012. Agents with U.S. Customs Enforcement in Chicago found a package containing 11.26 grams of MDMA. It came from England and was addressed to Lawin at a home on Walnut Street in Cedar Falls.

In April 2013, customs agents intercepted two parcels of MDMA from Belgium that were addressed to Walker and another man in Cedar Falls. Investigators said Lawin had ordered the packages through Silk Road.

As part of the investigation, undercover officers with the Tri-County Drug Enforcement Task Force and Homeland Security Investigations delivered one of the packages --- which contained 126 grams of MDMA --- to the addressee. It was later placed in a vehicle parked in the lot of a Cedar Falls restaurant where Lawin worked. Lawin retrieved the package from the car and left an envelope with 2 grams of MDMA, according to court records.

The package addressed to Walker was also delivered. A former roommate of Walker’s picked it up, and officers later searched the home and found 124 grams of MDMA, records state.

Silk Road was set up in 2011 to give buyers and sellers complete anonymity, and the site used untraceable Bitcoins for transactions, according to court records. FBI officials called the site “the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet.”

The man who allegedly ran Silk Road, 29-year-old Ross William Ulbricht of San Francisco, Calif., was detained in October 2013 by federal authorities, and he was indicted in U.S. District Court in Southern New York on Feb. 4. Authorities also seized 173,000 Bitcoins in connection with the Silk Road investigation.