A US man who had already completed a sentence for selling pressed Xanax pills on the dark web went back to court on Weds, Jun 28 to face new darknet market-related charges, this time for selling fake Oxycontin pills that contained fentanyl. Kyle Weiland, of White Plains, New York, allegedly used a New York Airbnb apartment as his base of vendor operations and had been under investigation since 2022 when he ordered an industrial pill press shipped to him under his name.
Upon Weiland’s arrest, which occurred in Tuxedo Park, NY, law enforcement agents confiscated $480,000 in cryptocurrency, three luxury sports cars, and an untold number of fake Oxy pills. A criminal complaint filed against him on Jun 30 states that “the quantity of narcotics recovered from the Tuxedo Park Residence is consistent with narcotics distribution and not personal narcotics use.”
Weiland had been previously charged with distributing and possessing alprazolam (Xanax) with intent to distribute, pleading guilty to the charges in Sept 2018. Along with forfeiting cryptocurrency and property valued at around $1 million in total, he was sentenced to six months in prison and six months of home confinement. In court, Weiland said his motivation for selling the pills was a response to the overdose deaths of fraternity members at the University of Miami and that he wanted to provide them with access to “safe” Xanax pills.
Although the darknet markets on which he was a vendor were not named, Weiland is said to have sold “thousands” of pills during the course of his career, which paused with his 2018 arrest and resumed less than three years later.
Unlike the course of his previous trial, during which he remained free and was not incarcerated until Feb 2020, Weiland was denied bail this time around and ordered to be detained.