Date: May 28, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Salt Lake City, UT — After a two-week trial, a federal jury in Salt Lake City returned a guilty verdict against two foreign nationals on all counts and returned a special verdict form requiring the forfeiture of $380,395.64 in cash. On May 20, 2024, Oluwole Adegboruwa of Las Vegas, Nevada, and Enrique Isong of Los Angeles, California, were found guilty of multiple federal crimes including conspiracies to distribute oxycodone and commit money laundering. During the conspiracies, Adegboruwa and Isong used the U.S. Mail and interstate commerce to commit their crimes, which generated more than $8 million in criminal proceeds. According to evidence presented at trial, from October 2016 through May 2019, Adegboruwa, sold more than 300,000 oxycodone pills to customers on dark web marketplaces, including Hansa, Dream Market, Wall Street Market, and Alphabay (which have since been dismantled by law enforcement). Customers paid Adegboruwa, who operated his vendor pages as “King Odua” and “Alagbada726,” with cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, which he later sold for traditional currency. Adegboruwa testified at trial and admitted that he was the only one who had access to his vendor pages on the dark web markets to process orders from customers. He then directed others in Las Vegas and in Los Angeles to package and ship the pills around the United States. Jurors convicted Adegboruwa under what is commonly referred to as the “kingpin statute” for organizing a continuing criminal enterprise and directing at least five others in the drug distribution conspiracy. At trial, the jury also heard testimony from co-defendants who have already pleaded guilty. They described the ways in which Adegboruwa directed them to sort, package, and ship oxycodone pills to minimized damage and detection. The jury also heard from a Utah customer who discussed the process of ordering from Adegboruwa’s dark web vendor pages and how the ordered products arrived at his home via U.S. Postal Service Priority Mail. After the jury returned guilty verdicts against Adegboruwa and Isong on all counts, they returned a special verdict form on May 22, 2024, requiring Adegboruwa to forfeit $380,395.64 in cash, $15,500 in lieu of a 2017 Dodge Charger, and 26 money orders totaling $9,400. The jury also found that Adegboruwa had to forfeit cryptocurrency now valued at more than $15 million. Adegboruwa and Isong are scheduled for sentencing in August 2024 at the Orrin G. Hatch United States District Courthouse in downtown Salt Lake City. United States Attorney Trina A. Higgins of the District of Utah made the announcement. The case is being investigated jointly by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Assistant United States Attorneys Thaddeus J. May, Jennifer E. Gully, and Stewart M. Young of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah are prosecuting the case. The case was investigated under the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF). OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest-level criminal organizations that threaten the United States using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach. CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.
