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Ex-NYU Student Gets 16 Years For Trying To Buy Ricin On Dark Web
By
Scott Heins
Published Mar 9, 2016
Modified Mar 9, 2016
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By
Scott Heins
Published Mar 9, 2016
Modified Mar 9, 2016
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A Manhattan man who was arrested for attempting to buy the deadly poison ricin through an illicit, dark web online marketplace has been sentenced Tuesday to 16 years in prison. Cheng Le, 22, stood before Manhattan Federal Court Judge Alison Nathan yesterday, who said his "horrible, serious and quite terrifying offense" warranted the lengthy sentence, Reuters reports.
Le came to the U.S. to study physics at NYU and committed his crimes in December 2014. He logged on to the Dark Web site Evolution and offered to purchase ricin from an FBI agent posing as another user. According to the South China Morning Post, Le referred to ricin as "simple and easy death pills" and had plans to sell the poison to other customers. Le described his plans to include the pills in bottles of everyday vitamins, so that victims would never suspect that they were actually taking poison.
"After all, it is death itself we're selling here, and the more risk-free, the more efficient we can make it, the better," Le wrote, according to prosecutors. After the sale was completed, feds sent fake ricin to Le's apartment, who picked it up while wearing latex gloves. Authorities found castor oil bean seeds—a key ingredient in making ricin—and a computer logged into Evolution in Le's home (Evolution was briefly the largest illegal online, bitcoin-friendly marketplace after the FBI's highly-publicized seizure and shut down of Silk Road in 2013).
Le was arrested in January 2015 and in August a jury found him guilty on charges including an attempt to possess a biological toxin for use as a weapon. The New York Post reported on Le's strange, meandering speech during his sentencing Tuesday, which included this strange humblebrag: "For me, I never signed up for any of this. I wasn't raised in a way that my fellow inmates were raised, in a world where dugs and guns are just as prevailing as air and water."
As she delivered Le's sentence, Judge Nathan admonished the man's “quite terrifying offense.”
“My sense of you is that you are at war with yourself,” she said
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Cheng Le
dark web
Evolution
ricin
Scott Heins
Scott Heins is a freelance photo and video journalist based in New York City, and a frequent contributor to Gothamist + WNYC. His work often centers around labor rights, housing, and policing. In 2018-2019 he traveled to four states while covering a wave of public school teachers strikes, with work featured in The New York Times, The Intercept, Getty Images, Splinter, and Bloomberg Photos. Scott is a dues-paying member of the National Writers Union's Freelance Solidarity Project.
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