New Orleans man admits to using ‘dark web’ to buy Chinese fentanyl sold in Crescent City | Courts

A New Orleans man pleaded guilty Friday to ordering large shipments of fentanyl off the “dark web” from China just as the synthetic opioid fueled an unprecedented rise in overdose deaths in the Crescent City.

Carl Hurst admitted in court papers to using an intermediary to buy the drug from Yan Xiaobing, a Chinese chemicals manufacturer who became the first person from that country indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for fentanyl distribution.

Hurst then sold the potent fentanyl — at a massive price markup — to a longtime friend from New Orleans who would peddle the drug on the city’s streets as heroin, he said. Prosecutors are set to put Hurst’s friend on trial later this month.

Hurst, 35, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to distribute 100 grams or more of a fentanyl analogue and 100 grams or more of heroin.

He faces 10 years to life in prison at an Oct. 23 sentencing hearing in front of U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle.

“Mr. Hurst has accepted his role in this offense as evidenced by his plea of guilty,” defense lawyer Townsend Myers said in a statement. “We will be coordinating with the U.S. attorney, U.S. Probation and the U.S. district court between now and the sentencing date in October to resolve the question of what Mr. Hurst’s sentence will be.”

The case against Hurst provides a revealing look into the long supply chain that connected covert Chinese labs to the gritty streets of New Orleans. His guilty plea also comes just months after U.S. President Donald Trump won a major concession related to the drug from the Chinese government, which announced a crackdown on fentanyl in April.

Prosecutors say that Yan, a Chinese national, produced fentanyl and similar drugs at plants in China. Yan sold the drug on the internet and shipped it to contacts in the United States.

From 2014 to 2015, Hurst was on the receiving end of those shipments, according to court papers. Hurst acknowledged that an unindicted co-conspirator, who is not named in the court papers, would email Yan orders for fentanyl on Hurst’s behalf.

Hurst bought the drug for about $4,400 a kilogram. He then turned to Leroy Smith, described in court papers as a longtime friend, and sold it to Smith at a price as much as 11 times higher.

Hurst paid Yan through wire payments sent by friends and family members in an attempt to hide his tracks, according to a document accompanying his guilty plea, known as a factual basis.

Smith mixed the fentanyl with heroin and sold it as heroin, prosecutors say. Customers were pleased with the strong product, and Smith built a “lucrative” drug-distribution operation, according to court papers.

But in 2015, Drug Enforcement Administration agents obtained emails between Yan and the unindicted co-conspirator under a search warrant. They revealed not only the negotiations for drug sales but also the names and addresses of package recipients. All of them had some connection to Smith or Hurst, the feds said.

Agents intercepted packages meant for Hurst’s girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend and Smith’s sister, prosecutors said. Each contained about one kilogram of fentanyl — the equivalent of half a million lethal doses, according to the DEA.

Smith was arrested in July 2015. Federal agents then built a case against Hurst by sending confidential sources to make narcotics purchases from him. When they raided his house on Wave Drive in New Orleans East in March 2018, they found heroin above a kitchen cabinet and a 9mm pistol in the master bedroom near his baby, agents said.

Meanwhile, Yan is no closer to facing justice in the United States. China has no extradition agreement with the U.S., and officials there have said they have no plans to arrest Yan.

Prosecutors painted Yan as a cunning drug dealer in their indictment, alleging that he shifted between producing different chemical analogues for fentanyl to stay one step ahead of the law as they were banned one by one. Yan sent fentanyl to 100 distributors in cities across the United States, the Justice Department said.

But when Bloomberg News tracked him down at his apartment in the central Chinese city of Wuhan last year, Yan claimed he was a simple middleman who had never broken the law.

“I don’t know what they do with them after they get them,” he said of the drugs he sent to America. “They might abuse it. That’s one possibility.”

Follow Matt Sledge on Twitter, @mgsledge.