A 37-year-old man who was first arrested in Laval a decade ago for selling counterfeit tranquilizers was sentenced by a U.S. court last week to 30 years imprisonment after being convicted of helping operate a major international drug trafficking operation on a hidden part of the internet.
Arden McCann was extradited from Canada to the U.S. in June 2022 to face charges laid by the Drug Enforcement Administration that he imported millions of counterfeit Xanax pills into the U.S.
A judge in the U.S. state of Georgia called McCann “one of the largest drug vendors” active on the “dark web,” a sector of the internet frequented by criminals and safeguarded through encryption from law enforcers and other uninvited intruders.
When police first arrested McCann in 2015 (he was selling counterfeit Xanax from a base in Laval at that time), they seized millions of tablets, $200,000 in cash, 15 firearms, as well as chemical ingredients for producing counterfeit Xanax – whose generic pharmaceutical name is alprazolam.
Another dark web drug lord, Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 after founding and operating Silk Road, an unlisted online drug marketplace, was pardoned by U.S. president Donald Trump last week after spending about a decade behind bars.
