A man in Brooklyn NYC was charged Wednesday with selling heroin and cocaine on the dark web in exchange for bitcoin and running a door-to-door drug delivery service in New York, federal authorities said.
The man Edison Hernandez, 46, allegedly sold drugs under the pseudonyms “dragoncove” and “Nino” on darkweb markets including Silk Road, AlphaBay, Dream Market and Wall Street Market for about six years starting in 2013, prosecutors from the Eastern District of NYC said.
The accused vendor became a highly rated vendor on the darkweb, which allowed customers to grade dealers on factors such as quality of the product, reliability and volume.
He was able to evade law enforcement for years by using pseudonyms and accepting payment in bitcoin.
The darkweb vendor then worked with two other suspected vendors, 42-year-old Michael Caruso and Raymer Ynoa, 32, to sell cocaine, methamphetamine, ketamine and MDMA in a door-to-door delivery service in Manhattan and Brooklyn for three years starting in 2019.
The suspects advertised their service as “Nino & Viktor’s Pastry Shoppe” and they allowed customers to order drugs over encrypted messaging apps. A delivery person would then allegedly hand off the drugs after the deal was set up.
They all face a maximum of 40 years in prison if convicted.
A fourth co-conspirator, Irvin Hernandez, was charged in a separate criminal complaint with working for the delivery service.
The suspects were expected to appear in Brooklyn NYC federal court Wednesday afternoon. Attorney information for them was not immediately available.
NYC Attorney
“Hiding behind the dark web, encryption services, or bitcoin will not stop this Office from rooting out those who flood our communities with illegal and hazardous narcotics,” Breon Peace, the US attorney for the Eastern District of NYC.