FBI busts Chinese-U.S. drug, money laundering ring

A federal grand jury in Dayton, Ohio, on Wednesday indicted three U.S. citizens, 22 Chinese citizens, and four Chinese pharmaceutical companies in international drug trafficking and money laundering conspiracies. From 2022 until their recent arrests, a couple from Tipp City, Ohio, and a person from Atlanta purchased shipments of illegal drug cutting agents from Chinese companies, according to the Department of Justice. They then allegedly distributed the substances to fentanyl traffickers in Ohio and arranged cryptocurrency payments to Chinese dealers.

What are cutting agents? Cutting agents can be inert substances added to a drug to increase its bulk, or pharmacologically active substances like caffeine or ketamine, according to ScienceDirect. The roughly 22 pounds of cutting agents purchased by the defendants included animal tranquilizers up to 200 times more powerful than morphine, according to the Justice Department. When mixed with fentanyl, the substance could have yielded about 330 pounds of drugs for sales in Ohio, the department said.

That much fentanyl could have killed up to 70 million Americans, FBI Director Kash Patel said on Wednesday. The case was the first time the FBI had carried out an international operation against fentanyl crime, he said.

The defendants are legally innocent until proven guilty in court. The Treasury Department also on Wednesday imposed sanctions on one of the Chinese companies involved, Guangzhou Tengyue, and two of its representatives, Zhanpeng Huang and Xiaojun Huang.

Dig deeper: Read my report on the introduction of new legislation combating nitazenes, a class of synthetic opioids.