Date: March 19, 2025
Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov
BOSTON — A Michigan man pleaded guilty in federal court in Boston to a conspiracy to import and sell illegal pharmaceuticals, including opioids, and to fund the operation of the scheme by fraudulently obtaining a COVID-19 pandemic relief loan.
Donald Nchamukong pleaded guilty to conspiracy to smuggle goods into the United States, to commit loan fraud and to distribute controlled substances. U.S. District Court Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton scheduled sentencing for June 25, 2025.
Starting in 2019 and continuing to 2022, Nchamukong and a co-conspirator, Doyal Kalita, conspired to distribute drugs to persons in the United States over the internet and using call centers in India. Nchamukong used shell companies, including a purported dietary supplements company and an auto parts supplier, and associated bank and merchant accounts to process sales of illegal foreign drugs, including the Schedule IV opioid, tramadol. Nchamukong and Kalita also received shipments of tramadol from India and reshipped the drug to customers across the United States, including in Massachusetts. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Nchamukong and Kalita fraudulently obtained a $200,000 Economic Injury Disaster Loan to fund their illegal drug scheme.
Kalita was convicted in 2024 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for orchestrating the online drug distribution scheme and a technical support fraud scheme and related money laundering.
The charge of conspiracy provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000, or twice the monetary gain or loss, whichever is greater. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and statutes which govern the determination of a sentence in a criminal case.
United States Attorney Leah B. Foley; Thomas Demeo, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation, Boston Field Office (IRS-CI); Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division; and Fernando P. McMillan, Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Office of Criminal Investigations made the announcement today. Valuable assistance was provided by Homeland Security Investigations in New York, Small Business Administration and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kriss Basil, Deputy Chief of the Securities, Financial, and Cyber Fraud Unit, is prosecuting the case.
On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud. The Task Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute the most culpable domestic and international criminal actors and assists agencies tasked with administering relief programs to prevent fraud by augmenting and incorporating existing coordination mechanisms, identifying resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing and harnessing information and insights gained from prior enforcement efforts.
IRS-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. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.