Thursday, March 09, 2023

On the Trail of the Fentanyl King

Just your average boy-meets-girl story … if by “boy” you mean “young man with a penchant for computer hijinks who leaves Iraq for the U.S. and becomes a dark-web kingpin by putting real fentanyl in fake pills,” and by “girl” you mean “the DEA.” Maybe that Tor browser isn’t everything you thought it was.

Allawi wasn’t content dealing on the street anymore. He was chasing a broader market than San Antonio—hell, a broader market than Texas. He bought a manual pill press on eBay for $600, eventually upgrading to a $5,000, 507-pound electric machine capable of spitting out 21,600 pills an hour. He also used eBay to purchase the inactive ingredients found in most oral medications, such as dyes. On May 23, 2015, Allawi created an account on AlphaBay. He named it Dopeboy210, most likely after the San Antonio area code, according to investigators. That fall, Allawi dropped out of school for good.



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