$1M opioid drug ring started small, No. 2 says

Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY

A man who prosecutors call the second-in-command of a multimillion-dollar online opioid drug ring said Thursday the operation started small, when he needed cash for student loans so he let his roommate sell his prescription Adderall.

Drew Crandall, 33, said the dark-web operation run by his roommate Aaron Shamo, 29, grew to include date-rape drugs, ecstasy, Xanax and more.

Shamo is on trial facing charges including operating a criminal enterprise and selling drugs that caused a fatal overdose. His lawyers have acknowledged Shamo was involved in drug dealing, but say he’s been wrongly cast as the kingpin of an organization that could not have run without help from Crandall and others.

Crandall testified Thursday that after Shamo added fake oxycodone laced with the powerful opioid fentanyl to the product line, Crandall said he started getting customer reports of users getting sick and overdosing.

Sales were skyrocketing at the time, and Shamo was getting big orders for tens of thousands of pills, said Crandall, who agreed to testify against his former roommate after pleading guilty to drug distribution and money laundering counts in a deal with prosecutors. His sentencing has yet to be scheduled.

The operation based out of a suburban Salt Lake City basement became one of the most prominent dark web drug operations in 2016, prosecutors have said, as the country’s opioid crisis spiraled into a fentanyl epidemic.