Man caught in FBI sting 'buying deadly ricin pills to resell'
Cheng Le, 21, tried to buy ricin pills on the 'dark web' to re-sell, court papers show
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 22 January, 2015, 7:40am
UPDATED : Thursday, 22 January, 2015, 8:16am
Associated Press in New York
Castor beans (shown on top) are used to produce ricin, a deadly poison, are similar in color and size to pinto beans (shown on bottom), but have a small pointed protrusion on the end. Photo: ReutersA man has been charged with trying to acquire the deadly poison ricin after he allegedly asked an undercover FBI employee online to deliver "simple and easy death pills" to his postal box and picked up a package containing a fake pill.
The arrest of Cheng Le, 21, from Manhattan on December 23 was announced after court papers were unsealed in Manhattan federal court. Cheng has remained incarcerated on charges of attempting to acquire and distribute ricin and committing postal fraud.
He is to appear in court tomorrow, and his lawyer, Patrick J Brackley, said: "Mr Cheng will be pleading not guilty at his arraignment on Friday. It's a complex case and we are still establishing the facts."
US Attorney Preet Bharara said Cheng tried to acquire ricin over the so-called "dark web", an internet marketplace where those peddling illicit goods, including drugs, weapons and biological toxins such as ricin, can more easily hide their identities.
"Thankfully, with the help of our law enforcement partners he was intercepted," Bharara said.
In a criminal complaint, the FBI said an undercover employee last summer assumed an identity on the "dark web" that previously had been used by a trafficker in illicit materials. The FBI said the employee struck up a conversation online in early December with a ricin buyer who was seeking three to five lethal doses of ricin to send to a client and suggested it might make a regular business since he had "buyers lining up."
"If you can make them into simple and easy death pills, they'd become bestsellers," the buyer said, according to the complaint.
The buyer said he planned to mix the toxic pill in a container of pills so that "sooner or later he'd ingest that poisonous pill and die."
"Even if there is a murder investigation, they won't find any more toxin. 100 per cent Risk Free," the buyer wrote, according to the complaint. "I'll be trying out new methods in the future. After all, it is death itself we're selling here, and the more risk-free, the more efficient we can make it, the better."
Authorities said Cheng was arrested after he picked up a sham shipment of a supposedly poison pill inside a bottle of other pills from a shipping store's postal box near his home. He was wearing latex gloves at the time, they said.
If convicted, Cheng could face up to life in prison because the purpose of purchasing the toxin was to use it as a weapon.
"In his desire to acquire this potentially deadly toxin, he picked his own poison and now faces the consequences of the justice system," George Venizelos, head of the FBI's New York office, said.
