In federal court in Portland on Tuesday, a Vancouver man pled guilty to conspiring with at least two other people to take part in a sophisticated, multimillion-dollar worldwide designer drug conspiracy.
According to court testimony and papers, Ryan Ahidjou Bo Scott, 33, faces eight years in jail and has been forced to pay more than $5.36 million to the federal government, which is a fraction of the money he made from selling illegal drugs.
Scott and three other people planned to acquire unregulated and raw ingredients from China and Peru in order to produce and sell designer medications sold under the names K2, Orisha, and Vesuvius.
According to court filings, Scott, who ran KTW Enterprises Ltd. out of a 3,000-square-foot warehouse in Vancouver, sold the synthetic pharmaceuticals online as well as to convenience stores, head shops, and gas stations nationwide. Between 2009 and 2012, the company’s profits exceeded $5 million.
Scott and other conspirators sold the goods as “incense” or “calling powder” and put warnings on the container that read, “Not for Human Consumption,” in an attempt to avoid being discovered by police authorities. However, prosecutors claimed that the goods were marketed for ingestion or inhalation in order to provide a psychoactive or stimulant high that was on par with or even higher than that of illegal substances like cocaine, marijuana, speed, and ecstasy.
The government’s intensifying assault on the designer drug trade included the FBI inquiry. Manufacturers have coated plant materials with compounds that imitate THS, the main element in marijuana, to develop synthetic medicines, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Justice officials claim that despite their frequent marketing as plant food, jewelry cleanser, bath salts, or herbal incense, they have resulted in serious abuse, addiction, overdoses, ER visits, organ damage, and overdose deaths. Although the Food and Drug Administration has not approved them for human consumption or medicinal use, they have grown in popularity among teenagers and young adults and are frequently more potent and harmful than marijuana.
Scott entered a guilty plea on Tuesday to one count each of conspiracy to distribute controlled drugs and money laundering conspiracy. Assistant U.S. Attorney Leah K. Bolstad wrote in court documents that he conspired to use international wire transfers including Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Cook Islands to move more than $3 million in domestic narcotics sales.
When federal agents searched Scott’s warehouse in May 2012, they found hundreds of pounds of dried plant material, kilograms of powdered uncut chemical cannabinoids, and other items that were verified to be similar to controlled substances. This was part of a large-scale synthetic drug manufacturing operation.
Using fictitious identities and email addresses, prosecutors claimed that Scott continued to illegally import, market, and sell new synthetic controlled substance analogs while he was out of custody under pre-trial supervision following his arrest. They also claimed that Scott conspired to sell and obtain fraudulent Canadian passports. Prosecutors said he earned an additional $240,000 while persuading the federal court that he qualified for a public lawyer chosen by the court.
To put it another way, Bolstad wrote in court documents, “The tax dollars of hard-working Americans supported court-appointed co-counsel for a man who, while under pre-trial supervision, had a quarter of a million dollars deposited into his bank accounts due to his continued importation and distribution of illegal designer drugs that are harmful to the community.” Our federal pretrial system is embarrassed by this.
According to the plea deal struck in the 2012 case, Scott will not be prosecuted for new drug conspiracy and passport fraud allegations that he was facing in 2013.
Scott is still being held. Janet Hoffman, a well-known criminal defense attorney from Portland, is one of the attorneys currently working for him.
Judge Ancer L. Haggerty of the U.S. District Court will sentence the defendant on September 22 at 9:30 a.m.
Last Monday, 35-year-old co-defendant Alexandre Valentinov Dimov pled guilty to the same accusations. His sentencing is set for September 3.
–Maxine Bernstein
