‘Breaking Bad’ student drug dealers are jailed
MEMBERS OF GANG, WHO MADE MORE THAN $1M, WERE FINALLY BROUGHT TO JUSTICE BY FBI
A ‘BREAKING Bad-inspired’ drugs gang made up of students who conspired to sell more than $1m worth of drugs around the world on the ‘dark web’ has been jailed.
The University of Manchester students took payment for the drugs in the electronic cryptocurrency Bitcoin and holidayed in Jamaica, the Bahamas and Amsterdam – until they were brought down by the FBI.
Ringleader Basil Assaf, 26, and his accomplices Elliott Hyams, 26, James Roden, 25, and Jaikishen Patel, 26, all from London, were jailed yesterday at Manchester Crown Court after admitting a catalogue of drug-related offences.
The young men immersed themselves in the recreational drug scene during their first year at university, but later became involved in dealing on an international scale.
Inspired by Walter White – the teacher who turned to drug dealing in cult TV show Breaking Bad – they dealt ecstasy, the hallucinogens LSD and 2CB, and ketamine – a horse tranquilliser abused in clubland – across Europe and to customers in America, Australia and New Zealand, as well as in Manchester.
Led by Assaf, described as the operation’s ‘prime mover,’ they used the Silk Road illicit marketplace from May 2011 until October 2013, when the FBI brought it down and seized its servers.
The Silk Road operated on the ‘dark web’ – the part of the internet unseen by ordinary browsers.
The value of the gang’s sales was at least $1.14m, but their profits are likely to have risen exponentially because they took payment in Bitcoin (BTC), the electronic currency which rose in value by 1,000 per cent in 2017, and is free from government and central bank control.
The gang’s dealings included the sale of about 240,000 ecstasy tablets, with a street value of just less than £750,000.
But their online drugs empire came crashing down after the FBI told the UK’s National Crime Agency of their discovery.
When NCA officers raided Assaf and Roden’s student flat in the city centre, they discovered a ‘drug dealing factory.’
Sentencing at Manchester Crown Court, Judge Michael Leeming described the gang’s global operation as a ‘one-stop shop’ for supplying ‘harmful and dangerous’ substances.
“Drugs are a blight on our society. Misery and degradation is the typical result,” Judge Leeming said.
Appearing at Manchester Crown Court, ringleader Assaf was jailed for 15 years and three months, Hyams was jailed for 11 years and three months, Roden was imprisoned for 12 years and Patel jailed for 11 years and two months.
The defendants pleaded guilty at earlier hearings to conspiracy to importing, exporting and supplying controlled drugs between May 2011 to October 2013.
A fifth defendant, Joshua Morgan, 28, of Chapeltown Street, Manchester, was jailed for seven years and two months after admitting assisting offenders by packaging the drugs for dispatch.
Ian Glover, senior operations manager at the National Crime Agency, said: “These five men were interested only in making money. They had no regard whatsoever for the harm these drugs could do to their users.”