Florida man and woman sentenced for conspiracy to sell counterfeit drugs on dark web

Date: Nov. 5, 2024

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Lexington, KY - A Hialeah, Fla., man, Omar Thomas Wala and a North Miami, Fla., woman, Vienna Cavanaugh were sentenced on Tuesday, by U.S. District Judge Robert Wier, to 90 months and 26 months in prison, respectively, for conspiring with others to produce and sell counterfeit drugs.

According to their plea agreements, Wala and Cavanaugh worked with their co-conspirators, Michael Basalyga, Reina Chirinos de Urena, and Philbert Campbell, to make and sell counterfeit alprazolam, commonly known by the brand name Xanax. As part of the conspiracy, Wala, Cavanaugh, and their co-defendants made pills that looked similar to real tablets and were stamped with numbers used by legitimate manufacturers, but they were made from other substances, including clonazolam and etizolam, designed to replicate the effects of alprazolam.

The conspiracy involved selling directly to known customers and by also selling the counterfeit drugs under pseudonyms on darknet marketplaces. People purchased the drugs with cryptocurrency across the United States, including in Kentucky. The Court held Wala responsible for distribution of more than 16.1 million counterfeit alprazolam pills from 2017 to 2022 and has ordered Wala to forfeit more than $6.9 million.

"Counterfeit medicine can be harmful and is a serious problem," said Carlton S. Shier, IV, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. "When purchasing these drugs, consumers may be getting too much, too little, or even the wrong drug, having no way to know it. We have a closed drug distribution system to ensure that our drug supply is safe to use and is not a marketplace for criminals. These defendants were prolific sellers of counterfeit drugs and posed a real threat to their customers. Through the dedicated work of our law enforcement partners, they now face the consequences of their illegal and dangerous profiteering."

Wala's and Cavanaugh's co-defendants are currently scheduled to be sentenced as follows: Campbell is scheduled to be sentenced on November 15, 2024; Basalyga is scheduled to be sentenced on January 14, 2025; and Chirinos de Urena is scheduled to be sentenced March 25, 2025.

Under federal law, Wala and Cavanaugh must serve 85 percent of their prison sentence. Upon their release from prison, they will be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office for three years.

United States Attorney Shier and Jim Scott, Special Agent in Charge, DEA, Louisville Field Division, jointly announced the sentence. The investigation was conducted by the DEA, with assistance from the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), FBI, and United States Postal Inspection Service. Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Rosenberg is prosecuting the case on behalf of the United States.

This case is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) investigation. OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest-level drug traffickers, money launderers, gangs, and transnational criminal organizations that threaten the United States by using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach that leverages the strengths of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies against criminal networks.

IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.