On April 16, 2024, families of victims of the fentanyl crisis in the United States held up photos of their loved ones as they attended a House Select Committee on the CCP hearing on the fentanyl epidemic. (Photo by VOA reporter Li Yihua)
[People News] On September 19, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced that Chinese citizens Qingzhou Wang (age 37) and Yiyi Chen ( age 33) were sentenced to 25 years and 15 years in prison, respectively, for importing fentanyl precursors and money laundering. Wang was a principal executive of Amarvel Biotech, based in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. Chen was a sales manager at the company.
According to Voice of America, U.S. prosecutors stated that Amarvel Biotech exported large quantities of precursor chemicals from China to the United States for manufacturing fentanyl and related substances. Prosecutors said that during the investigation, the company, together with Wang, Chen, and a sales representative surnamed Yang, shipped more than 200 kilograms of precursor chemicals to the U.S., receiving tens of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency in return.
Prosecutors said they knew these precursor chemicals would be used to make fentanyl and its analogs and that fentanyl use had caused the deaths of many Americans, yet they still shipped the chemicals to the U.S.
Prosecutors said that around November 2022, Yang began negotiating with a person he believed to be a Mexican drug trafficker, who was in fact a confidential source for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The company subsequently shipped fentanyl and methamphetamine precursors to New York.
Around March 2023, Wang and Chen traveled from China to Bangkok, Thailand, to meet with someone they believed to be the boss of the Mexican trafficker—but who was actually a second confidential DEA source.
They discussed providing technical support for “many customers in the United States and Mexico” to produce fentanyl. Thereafter, following orders from the two DEA confidential sources, they shipped precursor chemicals for a fentanyl analog to the U.S.
In June 2023, Wang and Chen traveled to Fiji to meet with the second DEA confidential source to discuss multi-ton orders of fentanyl precursors and ways to evade U.S. government inspections. That same month, they were expelled from Fiji and arrested by U.S. authorities. Their indictment was simultaneously unsealed.
In total, four Chinese chemical manufacturing companies and eight individuals were criminally charged at that time. The wave of indictments marked the first attempt by the U.S. to prosecute Chinese companies producing fentanyl precursors.
Yang remains at large.
On February 3 of this year, after a two-week trial, Wang and Chen were convicted. On September 18, a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York sentenced Wang. Chen had been sentenced on August 22.
“Because of fentanyl and the actions of people like Wang and Chen who illegally sold and supplied ingredients for fentanyl production, American families are burying their loved ones,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton said in a statement. “Those who callously fuel the fentanyl epidemic have nowhere to hide. These sentences prove it—achieved entirely through the extraordinary efforts of this office’s career prosecutors and our DEA and overseas partners.”
“These executives turned a Chinese chemical company into a poison pipeline, shipping hundreds of kilograms of fentanyl-related precursors into the United States, disguising them as everyday goods, and profiting through cryptocurrency,” DEA Administrator Terrance Cole said in a statement. “Americans are dying, yet they kept on selling. Thanks to the DEA and our global partners, they have now been brought to justice. This case sends a clear message: anyone, anywhere in the world, who profits off American deaths will be found and held accountable.”
In addition to prison terms of 25 years and 15 years, Wang and Chen were each sentenced to three years of supervised release. The court also ordered Wang to forfeit more than $67,000, while Chen was required to surrender 12 website domain names previously seized by law enforcement. △
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