By Deborah Nnamdi
A US court has sentenced a Nigerian US-based man, Oluwole Adegboruwa, and his accomplice, Enrique Isong, to a combined 40 years imprisonment for masterminding a multi-million dollar dark web drug trafficking operation.
This was contained in a statement on the website of the United States Attorney’s Office, District of Utah on Friday.
According to the statement, while Adegboruwa was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment, he was also ordered supervised release for life and the forfeiture of over $20 million.
The $20 million forfeiture is among the largest forfeitures holding a defendant financially accountable for his crimes in the history of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah.
The sentence comes after a jury found Adegboruwa and his co-defendant Isong, guilty in May 2024 of multiple federal crimes, including conspiracy to distribute oxycodone and money laundering.
According to court documents, evidence presented at trial, and statements made at Adegboruwa’s sentencing hearing, from October 2016 through May 2019, Adegboruwa, sold more than 300,000 oxycodone pills on dark web marketplaces to customers throughout the United States.
The jury found that Adegboruwa organized and supervised a continuing criminal enterprise that earned approximately $9,112,471 in drug proceeds.
The jury found that Adegboruwa was unquestionably in charge of the illicit narcotics operation. Each member of his enterprise served in different capacities.
Some were tasked with locating and procuring pharmacy-grade pills that were then re-sold through various dark web marketplaces. Others were involved in packaging the pills and/or shipping them to customers.
At trial, Adegboruwa admitted that he controlled sales on the dark web markets and the monetary accounts, including the cryptocurrency accounts through which the enterprise received the bulk of its profits.
Adegboruwa also admitted he was the one who decided to start his online dark web drug sales operation.
Isong, on the other hand, was sentenced to ten years of imprisonment and three years of supervised release.
