For his part in a scheme to distribute $5 million worth of synthetic medicines, a Bulgarian man who has been fasting and meditating in jail for the past three years in the hopes of getting into a Buddhist monastery was sentenced on Wednesday to five years in federal prison.
In around a year, Alexandre V. Alex Dimov is expected to be released from prison and deported as a result of that sentence.
In a Portland courthouse in the downtown area, Dimov told Senior U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones, “I’m very sorry I ever got involved in this business, even though it started legally.” I’m completely covered with humiliation.
The bearded 6-foot-4, 160-pound defendant showed up for court wearing sandals provided by the jail and a long mane of hair. He has been in the Columbia County lockup since his arrest in 2012 on the Hawaiian island of Molokai.
Following his involvement in a significant federal investigation into the designer drugs K2 Spice, a synthetic cannabinoid, and Orisha bath salts, a hazardous class of stimulants known as cathinones, he entered a guilty plea a year ago.
In what would be Oregon’s first narcotics prosecution employing synthetic marijuana made with the chemical JWH, Dimov and his accomplice, Ryan A. Bo Scott, were apprehended. The pills, which were packed to resemble marijuana, gained popularity on the counters of convenience stores and head shops all over the United States.
Scott is incarcerated at a federal prison in Illinois for eight years.
Prosecutors claim that the K2 that Dimov and Scott assembled was made with Chinese-imported raw ingredients that were then linked to dried plant material with chemical solvents. By that time, a long list of adverse effects unrelated to marijuana had been reported to poison control centers and health authorities nationwide, including tremors, nausea, seizures, hallucinations, racing hearts, and non-responsiveness.
Attorneys in the case debated the proper penalty before Jones sentenced Dimov.
One of the two assistant federal public defenders assigned to Dimov’s defense, Bryan Lessley, requested that the judge grant his client credit for time served.
Lessley informed the judge that the product was lawful at the time his client became involved in the K2 sale. However, he said that his client was unable to stay on top of the ever-changing legal landscape and could have done more to convince Scott to throw out a batch of bath salts that were confiscated by federal investigators despite being obviously illegal.
The government’s stance and federal law were extremely clear regarding the substances Dimov sold: they were never authorized, and even the so-called phony cannabis was harmful, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Leah K. Bolstad, who requested Jones to sentence Dimov to 6 1/2 years in federal prison.
According to her, nine people in Oregon alone have experienced kidney failure as a result of consuming the synthetic cannabis that is sold as spice.
Before Jones imposed his sentence, she stated unequivocally that there is nothing comparable to the marijuana this man sold.
Bolstad further noted that Dimov, who arrived in the United States as a foreign exchange student, was never involved in the day-to-day operations. Rather, he was a businessman who hired members of his host family in Nevada to package the medicines and arranged chemical agreements in China and Peru.
Dimov lavished the money he earned from his crimes on pricey rental properties in Santa Monica, California, and Molokai, also called Friendly Island in Hawaii.
According to Jones, Dimov and his accomplices sold synthetic cannabinoids that were formerly lawful but were later outlawed. Additionally, he noted that Dimov provided significant assistance to the government, assisting federal prosecutors in presenting a comparable case in Kansas. However, he said that military members had used the harmful substances Dimov sold to evade detection by drug testing.
According to Jones, this is a horrible business.
— Denson Bryan
@Bryan_Denson; 503-294-7614
