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The Zheng drug trafficking organization was hardly clandestine. The Shanghai-based network sold synthetic narcotics, including deadly fentanyl, on websites published in 35 languages, from Arabic to English via Icelandic and Uzbek. .
The Chinese union has boasted that its laboratory could "synthesize just about any drug" and that it produced 16 tons of illicit chemicals a month. The group was so smug on smuggling and so bold in its marketing that it offered a money back guarantee to buyers if its goods were seized by the United States or other customs agents.
According to federal officials, the Zheng Group has, in the past decade, sent and shipped fentanyl and similar illicit chemicals to customers in more than 25 countries and 35 US states. According to US officials, the union's success, laid bare in a recent federal indictment, partly helps to explain the unprecedented record of the number of drug overdose victims in America.
Fentanyl, 50 times more potent than heroin, and the corresponding laboratory drugs have become the leading cause of opioid-related overdose deaths. And rogue chemical companies in China – operating openly and beyond the reach of US authorities – are the biggest source of deadly drugs, law enforcement officials said.
"The people in the labs in China produce this substance that kills Americans," Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in an interview. "It's a real crisis.The Chinese government has the ability to end this situation if it wishes, we think it should want to do it."
US authorities urged Beijing to close the labs and said the Chinese authorities had taken steps to control the chemical manufacturers. This surge came as relations with Beijing grew acrimonious in the face of the escalating trade war and American discomfort with China's growing economic and military influence.
In the United States, nearly 29,000 people have died from synthetic opioid overdoses, a category that experts say is dominated by fentanyl and its chemical cousins - a staggering increase in the 3,100 deaths reported in Canada. 2013.
One of the reasons for this increase is that the drug is so powerful that a packet the size of a sugar packet can contain 500 lethal doses. It also means that mail can be smuggled into what authorities call micro-expeditions, which are much more difficult to identify and prohibit than larger shipments of heroin, cocaine or marijuana.
Chinese companies send fentanyl in small quantities to resellers in the United States or Canada, but ship drugs in bulk to criminal cartels in Mexico. Cartels then mix synthetic products with heroin and other substances, or turn them into counterfeit pills. The product is then smuggled across the border.
While total seizures of fentanyl more than doubled last year, reaching 1,196 pounds, officials say an even larger amount of illicit drugs is passing. Some of the biggest busts of fentanyl have been in California because of the Mexican connection.
In September, for example, US Customs and Border Protection officers seized 52 pounds of powdered fentanyl at the Pine Valley checkpoint near San Diego. It was not a record. In December, police discovered nearly 20 pounds in a student's car.
This summer, authorities discovered 20,000 pills of fentanyl in the hidden compartment of a mini-cooperative at San Ysidro checkpoint a week after confiscating 11,500 tablets in another vehicle.
US drug traffickers also buy directly in China with a few clicks of computer mice on company websites or in "drug bazaars on the Internet", where communications are encrypted and traffickers often pay with crypto-currencies or gift cards difficult to find.
A 33-year-old man from Long Beach, for example, was sentenced in June to more than 26 years in prison for illegally importing bulk chemicals from China, including a fentanyl analogue, and then producing tens of thousands of pills at home. laboratory.
When officers raided his laboratory, federal prosecutors said they seized more than 11 kilograms of acetyl-fentanyl, an analogue 15 times more potent than morphine. Prosecutors said the Long Beach laboratory had sold about 300,000 tablets in the country.
In Salt Lake City, a former Eagle Scout is awaiting trial after he and five other people have been accused of turning his mother's basement into a laboratory of illicit pills. During the search of his home in November 2016, police found 70,000 pills containing fentanyl and $ 1.2 million in cash, prosecutors said. The group reportedly sold hundreds of thousands of pills on the dark canvas.
The ease with which resellers can buy fentanyl in China "is a challenge because it creates traffickers who are not affiliated with large organizations or cartels," said Paul Knierim, a senior official with the Drug Enforcement Administration. .
According to federal investigators, it is not difficult to find fentanyl and similar drugs on the Internet and sales tactics rival those of online retailers.
"A simple Google search of" fentanyl for sale "found a number of potential sellers," according to a report from the Senate Internal Security Committee released in January.
The investigators, "posing as a first fentanyl buyer," had contacted six online salespeople abroad, and each was proposing to ship purchases to the United States, sometimes with an aggressive stance.
The sellers "have actively negotiated (…) an agreement by offering flash sales on some illicit opioids and reduced prices for bulk purchases," the report says. When investigators "failed to respond immediately to an offer, online vendors proactively followed up, sometimes offering larger rebates to encourage sales."
Fentanyl was developed decades ago as an ultra-potent analgesic – 100 times more potent than morphine – for use in surgery. It is still used to help cancer patients at the hospice level.
Drug traffickers started to get into drugs in the mid-2000s, but its popularity surged in 2014 and 2015 because it was easy to obtain and extremely profitable.
According to the DEA, a kilogram of $ 1,500 can generate profits of $ 1.5 million after the drug has been cut and sold on the street.
There was only one place to get the medicine: China. It has a robust chemical and pharmaceutical sector, lax regulations and widespread corruption.
"Regulatory gaps have led to a sharp increase in the number of unlicensed or" semi-legitimate "manufacturers or distributors of chemicals," Bryce Pardo, an analyst at think tank RAND Corp., told Congress recently.
"A lack of oversight and accountability of governments and companies increases the potential for corruption," he added.
Chinese resellers have targeted a loophole allowing them to send parcels to the United States by mail without providing detailed information about the sender or the contents of the package. Private carriers such as FedEx and UPS are required to provide this information to customs inspectors, which can help authorities identify smugglers and smuggling schemes.
Last month, Congress passed legislation to close this gap, and President Trump should sign it.
US officials have long urged China to more aggressively control its chemical manufacturers, and China strictly regulates the production of 175 chemicals, including fentanyl and some of its analogues.
This product-by-product approach, however, allows pharmaceutical companies to modify chemical formulas to circumvent a ban.
The US authorities want China to follow the guidance from the DEA, which in February had used emergency powers to categorize fentanyl-related substances as federally regulated substances. The move was intended to facilitate the prosecution of offenders and to prevent chemists from making minor changes to the forms.
A representative of the Chinese Embassy in Washington declined to comment, but conveyed the remarks of Hua Chunying, head of the Foreign Ministry, at a press conference in Beijing in January.
"Drug cooperation is one of the strengths of police cooperation between China and the United States," said Hua Hua. "In recent years, both sides have been extremely effective in combating cross-border drug-related crimes and advancing the listing and control of psychoactive substances, which has generated widespread public approval of both. parties, the problem is very clear. "
The Ministry of Justice has laid charges against several Chinese manufacturers of synthetic opioids. They are unlikely to end up in US courts because Washington and Beijing have not signed extradition treaties and China has generally refused to send its citizens to the United States to participate in criminal trials.
In October 2017, the Ministry of Justice unveiled the first indictment against Chinese opioid manufacturers, accusing two groups of illicit drug companies selling fentanyl and other drugs to US resellers. The Court's minutes reveal that the rings were large, involving at least 100 distributors, and that the authorities were able to trace at least four deaths related to fentanyl and related chemicals sold by one of the groups.
Then, in August, Cleveland 's federal prosecutors unveiled an indictment of 43 charges against Zheng' s organization. According to the indictment, Fujing Zheng, 35, and his father, Guanghua Zheng, both of Shanghai, ran a global organization that manufactured tons of illegal chemicals each month.
US officials said the Zheng were perfectly ahead of the regulators – and the police. When the Chinese authorities banned the unregulated production of a synthetic narcotic, officials said, the Zheng used their expertise to adjust the formula to circumvent the bans and run the drug.
"We are working diligently to manufacture all possible chemicals to meet the needs of our customers," Zheng wrote on one of their websites, according to court documents. "We will create custom products for you."
In order to get their goods to American customers, the Zheng often used intermediaries who hid drugs in bulk shipments and then helped them redistribute them. Prosecutors said this helped to hide the origins of narcotics.
The Zhengs could not be contacted to comment on this story.
(EDITORS: HISTORY CAN END HERE)
But their operation had a deadly effect on the other side of the world. In February 2015, 38-year-old Leroy Steele, a small drug dealer in the Akron area of Ohio, sent an email to the Zheng organization seeking to buy the drug. Acetyl-fentanyl, according to court documents.
"Send me the prices and information on where I can send money," Steele wrote.
A member of the Zheng Group quickly responded, according to prosecutors, claiming that he represented a "professional manufacturer of acetyl-fentanyl in China" and that "our products are all of the highest quality, many customers Americans and Europeans buy mostly every month. "
"Tell me how much you want to buy," wrote the member. "Do you want to have a sample order?"
Steele sent $ 3,500 to the Zhengs for half a kilo of narcotics.
The trafficker, who would be sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to drug distribution charges, promptly launched heroin charges with acetyl-fentanyl to his clients, prosecutors said .
In a few weeks, federal officials said, two of Steele's clients, a 37-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman, had died – as a result of an overdose.
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PHOTO (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): CHINA-FENTANYL
GRAPHIC (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): Fentanyl from China
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