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Philly's fentanyl mail-order 'Narcoboss' busted
#916964
07/14/17 05:39 AM
07/14/17 05:39 AM
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Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 3,571
Scorsese
OP
Underboss
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OP
Underboss
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 3,571
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Feds: Philly's fentanyl mail-order 'Narcoboss' out of business
Updated: JULY 13, 2017 — 7:01 PM EDT
by Sam Wood, Staff Writer @samwoodiii | samwood@phillynews.com
On Facebook, Henry Koffie called himself a “professional entrepreneur from SouthWest Philadelphia.” He posted selfies flexing his muscles, looking pensive, and flashing large wads of cash. On the darkest corners of the internet, Koffie allegedly branded himself as “Narcoboss” and used a Mexican booking photo of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán as his profile picture.
In Philadelphia this week, federal prosecutors identified Koffie as a mail-order businessman, a “nationwide drug dealer” who shipped packages of the powerful narcotic fentanyl across the country using USPS Priority Mail. According to charging documents, Koffie is responsible for the overdose deaths of two men in Portland, Ore., and has been linked to more overdoses in Florida, Idaho, Michigan, North Dakota, and Oregon.
Koffie allegedly ordered bulk quantities of fentanyl 14 times from China and Hong Kong. The drugs were shipped through the U.S. Postal Service to his mother’s home in suburban Philadelphia, prosecutors said, and Koffie picked up the drugs and repackaged them into smaller amounts, often pressing the powder into pill form.
He advertised on the dark web, a part of the internet where illegal activities are rife, taking orders from his diverse clientele over a notorious site called AlphaBay, which operated as an escrow service between buyers and vendors. (The site appeared Thursday to have been shut down by the federal government.)
Then Koffie “prolifically” shipped out thousands of parcels using online postage services to buy postage, Priority Mail envelopes, and corner mailboxes, prosecutor’s said. His most popular product was “2 Grams China White Synthetic Heroin Fentanyl Mix.”
On internet forums, Koffie’s alleged alter-ego, Narcoboss, earned glowing reviews for impeccable customer service. He was hailed as a reliable vendor who provided quick service and always included a little more product than the client had paid for. His reputation earned the attention of Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security that pursues cross-border cybercrime.
“He was a top-10 target,” said Brian Michael, the agency’s deputy special agent in charge in Philadelphia. “He was a large importer of fentanyl.” Using not much more than basic internet search tools, the agency determined that Narcoboss had filled more than 6,615 orders for fentanyl at $40 a gram. Federal agents estimated that during a one-year period, Koffie sold more than seven kilograms of the deadly drug and netted at least $260,000.
On June 10, Narcoboss became a short-lived internet star when he was mentioned in a New York Times story about opioid dealers embracing the dark web. Soon after, Narcoboss went silent. Customers, who had praised Narcoboss for two-day shipping, began to grouse about unfilled orders.
“Don’t buy from this vendor,” grumbled Reddit user Sanyardsent in mid-June. “He isn’t shipping out orders anymore; we’ve been had.”
“That’s a damn shame,” replied NoWayJesus1. “All the opiate vendors are either getting locked up or exiting.”
Koffie, 32, was arrested July 5 at his home in Darby, just over the Philadelphia city line, and charged with multiple federal drug-trafficking counts. He was being detained at the Federal Detention Center pending transfer to Oregon, where he will face charges in connection with two fatal overdoses. When federal agents raided Koffie’s property, they seized a half-kilogram of fentanyl, several pounds of a binding agent used in pill production, scales, and bank statements.
Michael, of Homeland Security Investigations, said he could not go into detail about the investigation.
“He’s definitely one of the largest targets we’ve taken off the market in the Philadelphia area,” Michael said.
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Re: Philly's fentanyl mail-order 'Narcoboss' busted
[Re: BlackFamily]
#917314
07/22/17 03:32 PM
07/22/17 03:32 PM
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Joined: Jul 2010
Posts: 2,989
getthesenets
Underboss
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Underboss
Joined: Jul 2010
Posts: 2,989
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Reminds me of Jay-Z 'Story Of OJ' : Guys on the gram holding money to their ears, there's a disconnect. Indeed,BF. Posing in social media pictures with cash just makes you a target...either for cops or for the wolves. Here is an update to the story.....specifically about the so called "dark web" and AlphaBay http://www.philly.com/philly/business/al...d-20170715.htmlThe world’s largest underground market for illicit goods was shut down last week following the arrest of its alleged mastermind in Thailand.
“It was one-stop shopping for criminals,” Edward J. McAndrew, a former federal cyber-crime prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said Friday. “Drugs, child porn, weapons, credit card numbers, personal ID information. You name it, you could buy it there. It really was a bazaar.”
AlphaBay was allegedly used by a Philadelphia fentanyl dealer who was charged this week. The site was launched in November 2014 on the “dark web,” a freewheeling segment of the Internet that requires identity-shielding software to use. The site’s emergence filled the void created when its predecessor, Silk Road, was dismantled in 2013 by federal officials.
AlphaBay, which primarily served an anonymous marketplace for recreational drugs, grew to become twice the size of Silk Road, said Nicolas Christin, a professor of computer science and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. During the first quarter of 2017, AlphaBay netted $600,000 to $800,000 a day, he said.
“And that’s a conservative estimate,” said Christin, who estimated that AlphaBay’s operators earned about 6 percent of the price of every item sold.
AlphaBay’s reputed founder, Alexandre Cazes, was arrested July 5 in Bangkok. Thai authorities confiscated Cazes’ four Lamborghini sports cars and three houses, according to the Bangkok Post. Police in Canada seized several web servers in Quebec. On July 12, Cazes, a 26-year-old Canadian citizen, was found dead in his jail cell of an apparent suicide.
Christin said shutting down AlphaBay likely would have little impact on illicit trade on the internet.
“It’s not super-effective,” he said. “It will only disrupt the market on a short-term basis. Going after large vendors seems like a more valuable avenue for intervention.”
Agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Philadelphia declined to comment on the closing of AlphaBay. This week, they arrested a reputed mail-order fentanyl dealer who took thousands of orders over the website.
Henry Koffie of Darby Borough allegedly distributed seven kilograms of the deadly narcotic, using the U.S. Postal Service to deliver the drugs to his customers. HSI called Koffie “one of the Top 10” fentanyl dealers on the dark web. Koffie’s lawyer said there was no proof that his client was the man HSI identified under the name “Narcoboss.”
McAndrew, the former cybercrime prosecutor who is now a partner at Ballard Spahr, said dark web entrepreneurs often feel invincible because their identities are cloaked with an aura of anonymity. McAndrew said other marketplaces were already springing up to replace AlphaBay.
“There is a whack-a-mole quality to this. There’s nothing you can do to totally stop it,” McAndrew said. “But operations like this send a message to people that they’re wrong if they think they’re beyond reach.”
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