North Texas drug dealer who used darknet to sell fentanyl, elephant tranquilizer sentenced
A 55-year-old North Texas man who sold drugs including fentanyl on the dark web to Dallas-Fort Worth residents has been sentenced to more than 24 years in federal prison, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Sean Shaughnessy was sentenced Monday to 293 months in prison after he was convicted last year of three separate charges of conspiracy to possess and distribute illegal drugs and one count of possession of child pornography, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas.
Shaughnessy sold fentanyl, pentedrone, carfentanil (an elephant tranquilizer) and versions of fentanyl and pentedrone that would only be legal with a prescription, according to trial evidence cited by the DOJ. He did it using the darknet, an unindexed portion of the internet that can only be accessed with special software.
According to the Justice Department, Shaughnessy’s buyers used cryptocurrencies to purchase drugs on the dark web, which he would then ship to them “in the Dallas area and all over the world.”
Multiple customers testified at the trial, saying that Shaughnessy’s drugs arrived quickly and were highly potent, according to the DOJ. In one case, authorities linked drugs he sold to the overdose death of a man in his 20s who bought from Shaughnessy.
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Shaughnessy was caught through an undercover operation by Homeland Security, according to the DOJ. A Homeland Security Investigations special agent testified that Shaughnessy directed thousands of dollars to himself, made through selling illegal drugs.
When asked in an interview by authorities, Shaughnessy told agents they would need to “check his taxes” to find out what he did for a living, the DOJ said. The agents contacted the IRS, which said he had not filed taxes for the time period they were investigating.
In body-camera video of his arrest, Shaughnessy had white powder visible around his nose and was seen taking a small bag of drugs from his pocket and dropping it to the ground as officers handcuffed him, according to the DOJ. He tried to kick the drugs away and, when officers found them, insisted that the drugs did not belong to him.
Shaughnessy was convicted in June, the DOJ said in the release. He was charged via an indictment from April 2019.
