Date: June 18, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Sacramento, CA — Holly Danielle Adams of Indio, pleaded guilty today to conspiring to distribute fentanyl and methamphetamine and to conspiring to launder money, U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert announced. According to court documents, between 2020 and 2022, Adams and co-conspirator Devlin Hosner operated vendor accounts on the dark web marketplaces known as ToRReZ and Dark0de. Adams and Hosner generated hundreds of thousands of dollars selling counterfeit oxycodone pills pressed with fentanyl, after which they laundered the proceeds using cryptocurrency mixers, wallets, and other online tools. In September 2021, state law enforcement officers executed a search warrant at an address where Adams and Hosner were residing. After officers announced their presence, Hosner attempted to impede their entry while Adams destroyed pills by pouring them into a chemical solution. Adams and Hosner were arrested and subsequently released by state authorities but resumed selling fentanyl on the dark web a few months later while they were unknowingly under investigation by federal law enforcement agents. In March 2022, federal law enforcement executed a search warrant at a hotel room in Riverside County where Adams and Hosner were temporarily residing. Officers seized nearly a kilogram of fentanyl-pressed oxycodone pills and sixty grams of methamphetamine from this hotel room and arrested the conspirators on federal charges. This case is the product of an investigation by the Northern California Illicit Digital Economy (NCIDE) Task Force, which includes agents from the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS 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. 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. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam Stefanki is prosecuting the case. Hosner is detained pending trial. The charges are only allegations; he is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Adams is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez on Sept. 24, 2024. Adams faces a mandatory minimum statutory penalty of 10 years in prison and a maximum statutory penalty of life in prison, as well as a fine of up to $1 million. The actual sentence, however, will be determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of any applicable statutory factors and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of variables. 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.
