Two alleged kingpins of an international drug ring have been indicted in U.S. District Court in Brunswick, shutting down an operation that circulated powerful narcotics on the internet’s Dark Web and caused the overdose deaths in 2017 of two U.S. Navy sailors stationed in Kingsland, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia.
Thomas Michael Federuik, 59, of Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada, and Paul Anthony Nicholls, 44, of Surrey, England, both are charged with drug and money laundering, according to the indictment announced this week. The long-standing sealed indictments were unsealed May 27, after which both men were taken into custody by authorities in their respective countries, according to Barry L. Paschal, spokesman for the Southern District.
Federuik, known as “Canada1,” and Nicholls, known as “Nico Laeser,” both await extradition to Georgia, possibly to the Glynn County Detention Center, Paschal said.
The charges carry a possible life sentence and a minimum of 10 years in federal prison. The charges additionally pose the possibility of up to $10 million in fines.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the two men contrived online business sites such as “East Van Eco Tours” and “Bridge City Consulting LLP” as fronts for the distribution of the powerful narcotic Fentanyl and other drugs on the Dark Web.
The Dark Web is an underground section of the internet which cannot be reached via traditional search engines and is typically accessed with criminal intentions.
Operating out of Canada, Federuik and Nicholls allegedly used the phony business sites to distribute illicit drugs that were obtained from as far away as China and Hungary.
The drug supply line resulted in the overdose deaths of two petty officers stationed at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Kingsland in separate incidents in October 2017, authorities said.
Identified by the U.S. Attorney’s Office only as “B.J.T.” and “T.L.B.,” the two servicemen’s fatal Fentanyl overdoses ignited multi-agency Operation Canada1 that same month. Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Calgary Police Service officers traced the fatal drug supply back to a Dark Web vendor whose handle was Canada1.
Investigators then followed a Dark Web trail from Kingsland back to Canada and ultimately to Federuik and Nicholls.
“The number of deaths from drug overdoses, particularly Fentanyl and its analogues, has reached a record high in the United States and every citizen of this country should be alarmed,” said David Estes, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia. “The prevalence of this drug is, in large part, fueled by an illicit pipeline of illegally imported drugs. This investigation sought to trace that pipeline to its source to cut off its flow to our country in an effort to protect our citizens from harm.”
Canada’s Online Undercover Operations Unit, its Cyber Crimes Operations Group and the Canada Border Service Agency joined American agents from the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations division in the investigation. Other U.S. agencies taking part included the criminal investigations office of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Office, the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the U.S. Marshals Service. England’s National Extradition Unit, the Metropolitan Police and the Staffordshire Police also contributed to the investigation.
“This poison ultimately led to the deaths of two service members and destroyed the lives of countless others,” said Special Agent in Charge Katrina W. Berger, who oversees Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) operations in Georgia and Alabama. “Stopping drug traffickers takes a team, and I’m proud of the work done by HIS and its law enforcement partners working together to stop this destructive epidemic.”
The federal case against Federuik and Nicholls will be prosecuted at the U.S. District Courthouse in Brunswick by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Frank M. Pennington II and Gregory Gilluly Jr.
___
(c) 2022 The Brunswick News
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
