US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on 22 August the unsealing of an indictment charging two Chinese citizens with conspiracy to manufacture and ship opioids and other drugs to the USA and other countries.
The 83-page indictment – filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio on 17 August – also alleges the drugs directly led to the fatal overdoses of two people in Akron, Ohio.
The indictment charges Shanghai residents Fujing Zheng and his father Guanghua Zheng with conspiracy to manufacture and distribute controlled substances into the United States. Among other crimes, they are also accused of operating a continued criminal enterprise and money laundering.
The charges carry a potential life sentence as the drugs involved resulted in death and the defendants’ conduct qualifies for an “enhancement under the [so-called] kingpin statute”, a US federal law that targets large-scale drug traffickers responsible for long-term and elaborate drug conspiracies, the US Department of Justice said.
According to the indictment, Zheng and his father used several companies to manufacture and distribute hundreds of controlled substances, including analogues of fentanyl, an opioid commonly used as pain medication and for anaesthesia. They allegedly created and maintained numerous websites to advertise and sell millions of illegal drugs in over 35 languages.
The indictment claims that that the Zhengs engaged in this “conspiracy” for10 years, beginning in 2008, from a base of operations in Shanghai, with co-conspirators around the world – including in the US – receiving, repackaging and redistributing drug shipments to hide their Chinese origins.
This included Massachusetts-based Bin Wang, who allegedly smuggled drugs from China to the United States, before shipping them to customers across the country. Wang has pleaded guilty to his role in the alleged conspiracy and is expected to be sentenced in November.
The indictment also alleges that acetyl fentanyl purchased from the Zheng’s by Akron, Ohio resident Leroy Steele directly resulted in the overdose deaths in Ohio of Thomas Rauh and Carrie Dobbins in March 2015. Steele was subsequently convicted of drug offences and is serving a 20-year prison sentence, the DOJ said.
The Zhengs continued with their operations “despite the deadly consequences”, the indictment said, bypassing Chinese restrictions on international narcotics sales by creating analogues of banned drugs with a slightly different chemical structure but “the same or even more potent effect”.
In July 2018, the Zhengs agreed to manufacturer adulterated cancer medication, creating counterfeit pills that replaced the active cancer-fighting ingredient with dangerous synthetic drugs, and created and shipped counterfeit Adderall pills that were adulterated with deadly bath salts, the indictment claimed.
They allegedly laundered the proceeds of the sales using digital currency, including Bitcoin, transmitted drug proceeds into and out of bank accounts in China and Hong Kong, and bypassed currency restrictions and reporting requirements.
“The trail from at least two dead bodies in Akron, Ohio, leads to the Zhengs,” US attorney Justin Herdman said. “This group has shipped deadly fentanyl analogues and other drugs around the globe for a decade. Law enforcement will follow the evidence wherever it leads, including overseas, to stop the flow of drugs that have caused so much heartbreak and destruction in Ohio.”
US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) acting administrator Uttam Dhillon similarly said that the agency would “relentlessly pursue” anyone shipping such drugs to the US and “bring them to justice”.
“These Chinese drug traffickers are directly responsible for the deaths of US citizens and we will hold them accountable in a US court of law,” he added
The indictment comes shortly after US President Donald Trump asked Sessions at a cabinet meeting on 16 August to “take a look at the fentanyl that’s coming out of China and Mexico” and to do whatever he could to “legally stop it”.
While announcing the indictment, Sessions described fentanyl and its analogues as the “number one killer drug in American today” and said “most of them come from China”.
“That’s why the Department of Justice under President Donald Trump has taken historic new steps against the threat of Chinese fentanyl,” he added.
During his visit to Ohio, Sessions also announced several other legal actions related to the opioid crisis, including arrests, charges and guilty pleas as a result of “Operation Darkness Falls” targeting people and organisations that sell fentanyl and other drugs over the dark net.
These cases are the result of a joint operation involving the DOJ, HSI, US Postal Inspection Service, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service , and are being prosecuted by assistant US attorneys Matthew Cronin and Daniel Riedl.
The attorney general also said the DOJ had taken first-of-its-kind legal action to reduce opioid over-prescription, filing a complaint to bar two Ohio doctors from prescribing medications after an investigation allegedly revealed they had recklessly and unnecessarily distributed painkillers and other drugs.
Ohio-based doctors Michael Tricaso and Gregory Gerber were served temporary restraining orders – under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) – forbidding them from writing prescriptions in the first ever civil injunctions under the CSA against doctors who allegedly prescribed opioids illegally.
According to documents filed in US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, both Tricaso and Gerber are the subjects of ongoing investigations.
The restraining orders issued against the doctors are the result of efforts by the DOJ’s Prescription Interdiction and Litigation Task Force, created as part of an initiative to “stop opioid abuse and reduce drug supply and demand” announced by Trump in March 2018.
“We rely on doctors to be part of the solution to the opioid epidemic -- not part of the problem,” said Special Agent in Charge Lamont Pugh of the US Department of Health and Human Services office of inspector general. “We will continue our aggressive efforts to protect patients and taxpayers from physicians who abuse their position in order to enrich themselves.”
Ohio is also the site of multi-district litigation (MDL) proceedings before Judge Dan Polster in the District Court for the Northern District of Ohio claiming improper marketing and distribution of opioid painkillers by pharma companies across the US.
The US Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation approved the centralisation of 64 separate state and municipal lawsuits in December, a figure that has grown exponentially over the course of 2018, according to parties.
