A man from Riverside County was handed a 10-year prison sentence for a scheme to illegally obtain and resell drugs through the dark web. The suspect is said to have run a drug distribution entity that involved the stealing of nine doctors’ personal identities, which he then planned to sell through darknet channels.
The 29-year-old Christopher Lazenby was charged last year on two counts – including the possession and intended distribution of methamphetamine and oxycodone. He pleaded guilty to these charges before the courts made the latest decision.
Identity Theft and Drugs
According to a September 2019 press release, Lazenby committed his crimes by illegally obtaining the identities of nine physicians and one doctor’s assistant.
These identities were used to bypass the screening process of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) online registration portal. By doing so, he managed to alter the doctors’ addresses and replaced them with his own rented mailboxes in Carson and Los Angeles.
Having achieved this goal, the defendant went ahead to forge the doctors’ signatures on fake prescriptions to obtain oxycodone, hydrocodone and Adderall in this manner. As soon as he received the consignment of drugs, the court learnt that Lazenby used darknet platforms to market the drugs for sale.
Lazenby was apprehended by law enforcement in October 2018 at a hotel room he rented using a fake name. The police raid led to the discovery of drugs including methamphetamine, oxycodone, and pieces of evidence that linked the suspect to victims of his identity theft scheme.
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