A former skilled skateboarder from Lengthy Seashore was sentenced on Wednesday, Jan. 19, to eight years in federal jail for promoting medicine and laundering Bitcoin with different drug traffickers on the darkish internet.
Evan Jaime Hernandez, 35, was sentenced at federal court docket in Santa Ana after pleading responsible to 1 depend every of distribution of methamphetamine and laundering of financial devices in June, the Division of Justice mentioned in a press release.
Hernandez admitted to distributing the narcotics from not less than March 2018 to March 2019, along with conspiring with sellers based mostly in Orange County to distribute medicine over one of many world’s largest darknet marketplaces, in accordance with court docket information.
In March 2018, he bought practically two kilos of methamphetamine to an individual he believed was a cash launderer however was really working with federal regulation enforcement on the time, information present. Over one yr, Hernandez labored with the identical particular person 4 occasions, totaling round $171,000 in Bitcoin-to-cash exchanges.
Hernandez labored alone, along with with a father and son who had been additionally traffickers, based mostly in Huntington Seashore and Irvine, officers mentioned. The daddy was sentenced to fifteen years, whereas the son obtained 10.
Throughout a search warrant in March 2019 at a location of certainly one of Hernandez’s associates, officers recovered practically 15 kilos of methamphetamine that Hernandez distributed and would have been used to fill orders positioned on the darknet, the Division of Justice mentioned.
“(Hernandez) was concerned in a extremely refined drug-trafficking operation, the place he personally took on varied roles to make sure its success: acquiring a number of forms of narcotics, promoting them on to clients, and laundering cash on the again finish in a complicated method,” prosecutors mentioned in court docket paperwork.
Along with jail time, Hernandez was ordered to forfeit to the federal government a 2010 Mercedes-Benz, roughly $35,000 in money, and varied jewellery items reminiscent of watches, necklaces and rings.