This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records.
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Police arrested three men accused of selling thousands of pills of meth-laced “Adderall” on various darknet marketplaces and mailing them through the United States Postal Service through a fictitious business called “Professional Paper Filing Inc.” that listed a real return address of an uninvolved business. That business then told police that it was repeatedly getting packages of pills in the mail as "return to sender."
The men face a maximum possible penalty of life imprisonment.
An affidavit filed by FBI agent Daniel McCoy states that the feds had been following Joseph Vasquez, Joshua Vasquez, and Rafael Roman to post offices and residential addresses across several states over the course of more than a year, suggesting a potential large-scale takedown of a dark web drug dealing operation. The document says that they were able to trace the men’s alleged profiles across at least six different dark web drug marketplaces. One of the marketplaces, ASAP, shut down last year when its owner “retired.” There is no indication that any of these men actually operate any of the dark web marketplaces.