Seattle man sentenced in counterfeit drug case with local ties

While Verbowski was just sentenced last week, his guilty plea was entered in June 2023, months before a Sullivan man pleaded guilty to his involvement in the scheme. Brandon Adams of Sullivan, who also had a secluded lake house in Washington County where he carried out a counterfeit pill manufacturing operation, pleaded guilty in September and is scheduled to be sentenced later this month. Another defendant, Matthew Prunty, entered a guilty plea in January of this year and is scheduled to be sentenced May 6.

According to federal court documents, from October 2019 until May 2021, Adams conspired with Verbowski, Prunty and at least seven others to sell counterfeit benzodiazepine pills on the “dark web” — a part of the internet where individuals use anonymizing software to access content and websites. Benzodiazepines are a class of drugs that, among others, includes alprazolam, sold by Pfizer Pharmaceuticals under the brand name Xanax.

The conspiracy involved importing drug ingredients from China, pressing them into pills made to look identical to generic versions of widely abused prescription medications, and selling them in large quantities on the dark web using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin in an attempt to conceal the transactions.

Adams was the main manufacturer pressing the pills at his Missouri lake house and supplying them in bulk on the dark web under the moniker “BenzoBoys.” Some others involved in the conspiracy lived nearby, including Adams’ original business partner, who died of a drug overdose. Another alleged conspirator, identified but not specifically named in court documents, lived in Gerald.

Prunty and Verbowski, meanwhile, were distributors in other states. Prunty lived in Ohio and would order pills from Adams in amounts of 100,000 at a time.

After federal agents took over an encrypted messaging account previously used by Adams in May 2021, Prunty arranged to buy 200,000 counterfeit benzodiazepine pills in exchange for $46,000 and 2,000 counterfeit oxycodone pills that actually contained fentanyl. 

Prunty used a courier for the exchange: a co-defendant in the case, DeVonte Cole, according to court documents.

Cole carried out the job as instructed, leaving a black bag of cash and pills at a predetermined “dead drop” site near a rock at Meramec State Park — while under surveillance by federal agents — on June 27, 2021. He then picked up the 200,000 pills at another location nearby and left the park. He was pulled over shortly afterwards on Interstate 44 by the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

Lab testing later determined the pills Cole dropped off contained a total of more than 240 grams of fentanyl.

Verbowski, who used the online handle “Packlord206” and a variety of other aliases, was a major distributor of the counterfeit benzodiazepine pills in Washington state, according to court documents. Other alleged conspirators lived in New York and Florida.

Over the course of their dealings, Verbowski bought 630,000 pills of misbranded and counterfeit drugs from Adams “with the intent to resell them to others,” according to his plea agreement.

The drug alprazolam may be most commonly known by the Pfizer brand name Xanax, but is also legally sold as a prescription medication in the U.S. in generic versions. Breckenridge Pharmaceutical Inc., Qualitest Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Dava Pharmaceuticals Inc., for example, sell alprazolam pills that are respectively stamped with the codes B707, 2090 and S903. Adams obtained a pill press and imprint stamps to create pills that would mimic the appearance of the real alprazolam pills made by these generic manufacturers.

Aside from alprazolam, benzodiazepines also include several other drugs that are legally sold as prescription medications in the U.S., including diazepam, which is sold under the brand name Valium; clonazepam, sold under the brand name Klonopin; and lorazepam, sold under the brand name Ativan. 

Also classified as benzodiazepine derivatives, however, are several other substances including bromazolam, clonazolam, and flualprazolam, which were used in the pills sold as alprazolam in the BenzoBoys conspiracy. “These derivatives are not scheduled substances and have no accepted medical use in the United States,” according to Verbowski’s plea agreement.

Although Verbowski was living in Seattle at the time and had no direct involvement in manufacturing the pills, court records make clear he was aware not only that they were being sold outside the legal market for prescription medication but also of their counterfeit nature.

“At various times,” according to his plea agreement, Verbowski “provided feedback” to Adams “about how to make the misbranded and counterfeit pills appear to be more like the authentic generic versions of Xanax.”

Aside from doing business on the dark web, Verbowski, Adams, Prunty and others took other steps to conceal their identities, with Verbowski using a variety of online handles and fake names to register post office boxes. Court documents note that the conspirators attempted to cover their tracks by using “dead drops,” the encrypted messaging app Wickr Me and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

These efforts were not entirely successful, however, as the charging document in Adams’ case details several specific Bitcoin transactions.

“Bitcoin transactions are therefore sometimes described as ‘pseudonymous,’ meaning that they are partially anonymous,” the document notes.

In May 2021, an FBI special agent took control of Adams’ Wickr Me account and used it to continue previously ongoing communications with Prunty, arranging the June 2021 deal that resulted in the seizure of more than 240 grams of fentanyl.