Ryan A. Bo Scott, a former businessman from Vancouver, was given an eight-year prison sentence on Wednesday for his role in orchestrating a scheme to sell over $5 million worth of synthetic pharmaceuticals worldwide.
For his leading role in a conspiracy to produce and sell illegal narcotics and launder the proceeds, Scott was additionally sentenced to three years of court-supervised release following his incarceration by Senior U.S. District Judge Ancer L. Haggerty.
In order to keep in touch with the relatives sitting behind the defendant in the courtroom, Haggerty suggested that Scott spend his time in a nearby halfway house after serving his term at the minimum-security federal prison camp in Sheridan.
Scott, who was crying, said that it had never really dawned on him that it was against the law to make and sell goods that people were consuming.
That’s what I did, he replied, regardless of how hard I tried to dress it up.
Scott, who operated KTW Enterprises Ltd., a company incorporated in Oregon, said that he was a driving force behind the placement of his products—marketed as bath salts and incense—on the Internet and on the counters of convenience stores, head shops, and petrol stations throughout the United States.
Government authorities claim that the 34-year-old businessman who created items like K2 and Orisha marketed the pharmaceuticals to companies in Canada, Israel, South Korea, New Zealand, and Australia.
Next spring, Alexandr V. Dimov, a 36-year-old Bulgarian national who was found guilty of masterminding the plan, will be sentenced.
Scott and his accomplices advertised and sold the products as bath salts and incense, labeling them as “Not for Human Consumption.” However, people purchased them in order to get legal highs.
According to federal authorities, the incense might be smoked like marijuana and the bath salts could be consumed like cocaine, with unexpected and occasionally harmful outcomes. Kidney failure has been connected to certain designer medications.
In order to make incense and bath salts, Scott and his accomplices converted supplies of raw chemicals from China and Peru and packaged them in vibrant plastic bags. The goods were sent from a location in Las Vegas and a 3,000-square-foot warehouse in Vancouver.
The gang purchased raw plant materials and sprayed them with liquid chemicals that resembled the drug’s active ingredient to manufacture synthetic marijuana.
Teenagers and young adults were the main target market for designer medications. However, Scott and his accomplices discovered a new market: American military troops searching for medications that would not be detected by their required urine tests.
According to the prosecution, the plot to produce and market the illicit goods started in 2009 and came to a conclusion in the spring of 2012.
Two of Scott’s subordinates, bookkeeper Floyd Burk and customer service agent Nancy Gabaree, were sentenced by Haggerty on Tuesday for their involvement in the plot. The two’s attorneys said that Scott and Dimov had deceived their clients, who believed the goods they were assisting in the sale of weren’t unlawful.
The defendants and their families made passionate pleas before the judge to keep them out of jail. Their heedless loyalty to the two ringleaders had flipped their lives upside down.
As he prepared to sentence Burk, a farm lad with no criminal history, Haggerty said that all cases are challenging. The court considers a number of circumstances in which someone are technically guilty. Once more, though, not everyone who appears in court requires jail.
He gave Burk and Gabaree, who had served in the military, five years of probation.
— Denson Bryan
