Four men resident in Northampton have all been sentenced to prison for a combined 34 years for operating a multi million pound darknet drug operation. All of the defendants pleaded guilty to conspiring to supply Class A drugs on the darknet, the four men are named:
- Edgars Pirants (32 years old)
- Vladislavs Cvirkovics (28 years old)
- Filip Hmelnicenko (31 years old)
- Denis Potapenko (28 years old)
The four men operated multi million pound darknet drugs operation, that was very sophisticated. They ran their darknet drug empire from Northampton. The customers would buy drugs from the darknet using bitcoin. They then sent the drugs through the postal service, they distributed their darknet drugs nationally and internationally.
This is our first ever successful prosecution of a dark web drug supply and seizure of cryptocurrency, demonstrating that Northamptonshire Police can punch well above its weight in our ability to tackle this type of complex and hidden criminal network.
Their storage facility was discovered in June 2019. During a search of the facility, they discovered £2.7million of Class A and Class B drugs that included:
- 3.7kgs of Cocaine
- 50kgs of MDMA tablets & Crystal MDMA
- Amphetamine
- Cannabis
- Ketamine
Police followed the evidence which lead them to industrial premises located in Moulton Park, there they found a sophisticated and large cannabis factory worth £400,000.
Sentencing for darknet drug operation.
The sentence are as follows:
- Potapenko had been sentenced to 80 months in prison for conspiring to supply Class A drugs, 36 months for the conspiracy to supply Class B drugs and 10 months for possessing CS spray. He will serve them concurrently.
- Pirates was sentenced to 84 months behind bars for the conspiracy to supply Class A drugs.
- Cvirkivics was sentenced to 120 months for the conspiracy to supply Class A drugs and 72 months for the conspiracy to supply Class B drugs with 12 months for possessing a stun gun. He will serve them concurrently.
- Hmelnicenko’s sentencing is due in early 2021.
According to federal agents:
The scale of this drugs activity and the advanced tactics utilized by this criminal group are issues more typically associated with larger metropolitan forces and I am really proud of the team here whose work was second-to-none – meticulous, tenacious and committed, ensuring this gang was taken down.
They operated with the vendor account “MartinLutherUK”.