For selling illegal substances on dark web marketplaces, a 40-year-old Indian national was given a five-year prison sentence and ordered to forfeit about $150 million USD.
At the US’s request, Banmeet Singh, a resident of Haldwani, was detained in London in April 2019.
In March 2023, he was extradited to the US. He entered a guilty plea in January to two counts of conspiring to possess controlled substances with the intent to distribute them and to commit money laundering.
In order to sell controlled substances like fentanyl, LSD, ecstasy, Xanax, ketamine, and tramadol, Banmeet established vendor marketing sites on dark web marketplaces like Silk Road, Alpha Bay, Hansa, and others, according to court documents and statements made in court.
Customers used the vendor sites to order drugs from Singh and paid with cryptocurrency. Subsequently, Singh personally arranged or dispatched the medications from Europe to the US via US mail or alternative shipping methods.
Singh was in charge of at least eight US distribution cells between July 2017 and December 2012; these cells were dispersed throughout Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Maryland, New York, North Dakota, and Washington, among other states.
Individuals in these distribution cells received drug shipments and then re-packaged and re-shipped the drugs to locations in all 50 states, Canada, England, Ireland, Jamaica, Scotland, and the US Virgin Islands, the Department of Justice said on Friday.
Over the course of the conspiracy, the Singh drug organisation moved hundreds of kilograms of controlled substances throughout the United States and established a multimillion-dollar drug enterprise that laundered millions of dollars of drug proceeds into cryptocurrency accounts, which ultimately became worth approximately USD150 million, an official release said.
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