Date: Feb. 13, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Sacramento, CA — Gabriel Alva of Winnetka, was sentenced today to 10 years in prison for conspiring to distribute heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine over the dark web, and for possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert announced. According to court documents, Alva and his co-conspirators ran multiple drug vendor accounts on various dark web contraband marketplaces, including “Diablow” on the Silk Road 3.1 marketplace, “RaiseAppeals” on the Dream marketplace, and “RaisedByDiablow” on the Nightmare marketplace. Alva’s dark web vendor pages offered crystal methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine, and other narcotics for sale. Alva accepted payment in cryptocurrency for the narcotics he sold on the dark web and converted approximately $1.3 million worth of various cryptocurrencies into cash while operating his vendor accounts. Federal law enforcement agents executed search and arrest warrants at Alva’s residence in May 2019. Agents seized nearly 2 kilograms of heroin, more than 2 kilograms of cocaine, and nearly 24 kilograms of methamphetamine. Agents also recovered six firearms inside Alva’s residence (including a Remington shotgun, a Smith & Wesson assault rifle, and an unserialized AR-15 assault rifle), as well as a silencer, a scope, and several magazines of ammunition. This case was the product of an investigation by Homeland Security Investigations with the assistance of the Northern California Illicit Digital Economy (NCIDE) Task Force. The NCIDE Task Force is a federal task force focused on targeting all forms of illicit dark web and cryptocurrency activity in the Eastern District of California and beyond, and includes agents from the IRS Criminal Investigation (CI), Homeland Security Investigations, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam Stefanki prosecuted the case. 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.
