A North Haledon man will spend the next dozen years behind bars for helping to flood American streets with over a metric ton of fentanyl-related drugs, paid for with hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin sent directly to Chinese suppliers.
William Panzera received his 12-year prison sentence on Thursday following last year’s conviction on drug trafficking and international money laundering conspiracy charges, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The sentencing caps a six-year operation that moved massive quantities of deadly synthetic opioids from China into New Jersey communities, where Panzera and his co-conspirators distributed the drugs in both bulk form and as counterfeit pharmaceutical pills.
The case points to a growing problem for U.S. authorities, as crypto makes it easier for American drug networks to pay Chinese fentanyl suppliers at scale.
Panzera operated as a key member of a trafficking network that imported and distributed hundreds of kilograms of fentanyl analogues between January 2014 and September 2020, according to the statement.
The organization placed orders directly with Chinese sources for fentanyl analogues, MDMA, methylone, and ketamine, then wired payments through traditional transfers and Bitcoin to bypass conventional banking oversight.
A federal jury convicted Panzera of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 100 grams or more of furanyl fentanyl and 100 grams or more of 4 fluoroisobutyryl fentanyl, along with conspiracy to commit international promotional money laundering.
Tracking Bitcoin’s role in the fentanyl trade
Despite China's ban on crypto, Chinese suppliers remain the primary global source for fentanyl ingredients, pill presses, and counterfeiting equipment, with blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis documenting direct financial connections between traffickers and manufacturers.
In a 2024 report, Chainalysis traced an "on-chain fentanyl trade" involving a "broad array" of players, revealing that one group of suspected China-based chemical traders alone received over $37.8 million in crypto payments between 2018 and 2023.
Nick Carlsen, a senior TRM Labs investigator and former FBI analyst, explained that these operations depend heavily on Chinese underground banking networks to function.
"All the people taking Ethereum and turning it into Bitcoin through Thorchain and services like that are third parties," Carlsen previously told Decrypt. "That's not the North Koreans. Those are the Chinese money launderers."
Carlsen said these informal banks, mainly operated by Chinese organized crime syndicates called triads, take incoming crypto from various criminal enterprises and swap it for fiat that Chinese nationals want to move out of the country's restrictive banking system.
Eight other defendants have already pleaded guilty in related cases connected to Panzera's trafficking network.
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