Ex-Eagle Scout does his good deed

[Byker]

Nice, wholesome, clean-cut Mormon boy: https://tinyurl.com/y42j8os4
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Ex-Eagle Scout accused in online drug empire to stand trial

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST and CLAIRE GALOFARO
2 hours ago

In this Nov. 22, 2016 photo, two men in protective suits exit a residence as
local and federal law enforcement agencies respond to a drug bust in
Cottonwood Heights, Utah. The raid on Aaron Shamo’s home in the upscale
suburb of Cottonwood Heights, agents found a still-running pill press in the
basement, thousands of pills and more than $1 million in cash stuffed in
garbage bags, according to court documents. https://bit.ly/2MWKsNM

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — As America’s opioid crisis spiraled into a fentanyl
epidemic, prosecutors say one young Utah man made himself a drug kingpin by
creating counterfeit prescription painkillers laced with the deadly drug and
mailing them to homes across the United States.

Former Eagle Scout Aaron Shamo, 29, will stand trial beginning Monday on
allegations that he and a small group of fellow millennials ran a
multimillion-dollar empire from the basement of his suburban Salt Lake City
home by trafficking hundreds of thousands of pills containing fentanyl, the
potent synthetic opioid that has exacerbated the country’s overdose epidemic
in recent years.

The federal government’s case is expected to offer a glimpse at how the
drug, which has killed tens of thousands of Americans, can be imported from
China, pressed into fake pills and sold through online black markets to
people in every state.

Prosecutors have alleged that dozens of the ring’s customers died in
overdoses, though the defense disputes that and Shamo is charged only in
connection to one: a 21-year-old identified as R.K., who died in June 2016
after snorting fentanyl allegedly passed off as prescription oxycodone.

Shamo’s family, though, said he’s been singled out even as deeply involved
friends are offered more lenient plea deals. His father, Mike Shamo, said
his son was a chess whiz as a kid who experimented with marijuana in his
teen years, but later earned his Eagle Scout badge crocheting blankets for a
hospital.

Aaron Shamo became an internet-savvy aspiring entrepreneur and
health-conscious workout buff who loved self-improvement books like “The
Secret” and had dreams of starting his own tech-support business, Mike Shamo
told The Associated Press.

“He was brought in and saw the opportunity for making money, and he didn’t
truly understand the danger behind what he was doing, how dangerous the
drugs were,” he said. “I think he was able to separate what he was doing
because he never saw the customer. To him, it was just numbers on a screen.”

At the time of Aaron Shamo’s 2016 arrest, authorities said the bust ranked
among the largest in the country.

In a raid on his home in the upscale suburb of Cottonwood Heights, agents
found a still-running pill press in the basement, thousands of pills and
more than $1 million in cash stuffed in garbage bags, according to court
documents.

The group had started two years before, and grew to include more than a
dozen people, some of whom Aaron Shamo met working at an eBay call center,
court documents allege. Prosecutors say it started with a partnership
between Aaron Shamo and Drew Crandall, a shy friend he had bonded with over
skateboarding and tips for talking to girls. The pair eventually began
importing and reselling steroids to gym buddies, and the operation grew from
there, according to court documents.

Another man, Jonathan “Luke” Paz, has also pleaded guilty to helping develop
the recipe and press the fentanyl-laced pills after Crandall left on an
extended international trip.

Attorneys for Crandall and Paz did not immediately respond to requests for
comment.

Aaron Shamo ordered the fentanyl from China and paid a number of people to
receive it at their homes and turn it over to him, according to authorities.
He and Paz allegedly cut the powder, added other fillers and pressed it into
pills, using dyes and stamps to mimic the appearance of legitimate
pharmaceuticals, prosecutors said.

Public health experts warn that such mom-and-pop drug trafficking networks
can be especially dangerous: They cut and mix fentanyl — a few flakes of
which can be deadly — without sophisticated equipment, meaning in a single
batch, one counterfeit pill might contain little fentanyl and another enough
to kill instantly.

They were shipping “disguised poison,” prosecutor Michael Gadd said at one
hearing. “If you think for a moment about what type of people abuse
prescription oxycodone, it’s your neighbor, it’s my neighbor. It’s people
who had a knee surgery and got hooked.”

The pills were sold online, through a dark-web marketplace store called
Pharma-Master. The dark web is a second layer of the internet reached by a
special browser and often used for illegal activity, but it still has sites
with user-friendly interfaces and customer reviews, similar to platforms
like Amazon and eBay.

Pharma-Master allegedly grew to become one of the most prominent darknet
dealers, sometimes processing 20 to 50 orders a day, according to court
documents.

When orders came in, packagers counted pills, sealed them with a vacuum
sealer and slipped them into envelopes or boxes addressed to homes across
the U.S., prosecutors said. They put pills into Mylar bags to mask the
contents, wrote fake return addresses like “Jamaica Green Coffee,” and even
included phony invoices. The packages were dropped in mailboxes all over the
Salt Lake area to hide from police, authorities said.

Some were small orders from people buying for themselves, but in other
cases, the group shipped thousands of pills in bulk to gang members and drug
dealers who then resold them on the street, prosecutors allege.

Each pill cost less than a penny to make, and could be sold on the street as
a legitimate pharmaceutical for $20 or more, prosecutors said.

In June 2016, though, U.S. customs agents seized a package of fentanyl
addressed to someone receiving it for Aaron Shamo, and things unraveled from
there, according to court documents.

Five months later, investigators had found an incoming shipment from a
Chinese company known as “Express,” which is also under investigation. They
also scooped up outgoing shipments: A single day’s worth included 35,000
fentanyl-laced pills in 52 packages addressed to homes in 26 states,
prosecutors said. One box alone had a wholesale value estimated at more than
$400,000, according to court documents.

Aaron Shamo’s house was also raided in late 2016, and the following spring
Crandall was arrested in Hawaii when he returned from the globe-trotting
trip through Australia, New Zealand and southeast Asia to marry his
girlfriend.

In the years since his arrest, Aaron Shamo has become something of an
advocate for other jail inmates, starting a letter-writing campaign calling
on local churches to write to people behind bars to give them hope for life
after incarceration, said his father, Mike Shamo. He’s also written to the
governor, calling for more rehabilitation programs for jail inmates.

Meanwhile, Paz and Crandall have already agreed to plea deals and could
testify against their onetime friend, along with a potential parade of other
alleged co-conspirators.

His family will be watching the trial too.

“We just want equity. We want quality for everyone in this, so those that
were equally guilty are held accountable for their actions,” Mike Shamo
said.

https://www.apnews.com/eab87bc4e6ad4b168b52709765614ee3