WHITE PLAINS – A 32-year-old Middletown man was sentenced on Friday to 15 years in federal prison for importing and trafficking fentanyl analogues and synthetic opioids through the dark web.
Through his guilty plea, Chukwuemeka Okparaeke, also known as “Emeka,” admitted to importing drugs from Hong Kong and making false statements to the government regarding the proceeds of his offenses.
He admitted that in November 2016, he sold a synthetic narcotic to an 18-year-old individual who died from an overdose after using the drug, He also admitted that his narcotics offenses involved over 16 kilograms of drugs.
It was alleged that he imported kilogram quantities of fentanyl analogues from Hong Kong and China into the United States.
To transact with customers and coordinate his narcotics sales, Okparaeke used a darknet website known as AlphaBay Market, accessible only through a special software program that allows users to mask their identities and anonymize their internet traffic.
Under the AlphaBay vendor name “Fentmaster,” Okparaeke engaged in more than 7,000 sales of synthetic opioids, which shipped to customers throughout the U.S. using the postal service with narcotics proceeds of Bitcoins worth millions of dollars.
In addition to his prison term, Okparaeke was sentenced to five years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $105,177 in U.S. currency as well as Bitcoins.
