All language subtitles for American Greed s15e06 The Kingpin Next Door

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In this episode of American Greed.

Aaron Shammo was the kid next door.

Eagle Scout.

Churchgoer.

Kingpin. He ran a criminal syndicate
that had numerous people underneath him.

Millions of dollars.

Aaron Shammo is a clean -cut millennial
from Salt Lake City.

A young man with the resources to
succeed.

He had very, very good parents, good
siblings, and really sort of fashioned

himself a little bit of an entrepreneur.

But despite his daily affirmations and
positive thinking, he's breaking bad.

Very bad.

He was down in the basement running a
pill press.

And you're able to produce 7 ,000 to 10
,000 pills an hour, and you're churning

out pills all day. You do the math.

Tonight, the story of an unlikely dark
web drug lord whose lifestyle is

documented in social media photos that
would come back to haunt him at trial.

A story told by the reporters who chased
him.

You have a stereotype of what a drug
kingpin is, and I don't think for a lot

people he would necessarily fit that
stereotype.

The feds who collared him.

This product went to all 50 states.

And the amount going to each place was
just astronomical.

And the families whose lives he'd change
forever.

When we found out it was made in
someone's basement, we were just like,

to be kidding me.

This was one pill.

They didn't know what they were really
buying.

Mr. Shamwell was motivated entirely by
greed.

It's 10 a .m. on a quiet residential
street in the picturesque suburb of

Cottonwood Heights, Utah.

Inside this home, 26 -year -old Aaron
Shammo is in his basement playing the

video game Battlefield 1.

And just outside, a SWAT team is
mobilizing to break his door open.

We had to do this all very quickly.

So the officers made a quick and rapid
deployment entry into the house, and

everything was just kind of frozen as is
until we knew what we were dealing

with.

What they are dealing with is synthetic
opioids, including deadly fentanyl, up

to 100 times stronger than morphine, and
lots of it.

During that time in 2016, fentanyl was
not one of those things we really had an

eye on.

We had heard about it, but didn't have
any active investigations and did not

expect to find one of this scope,
especially here in relatively quiet Salt

City, Utah.

The investigation will uncover a new
kind of drug ring, not Mexican cartels

inner city street gangs, but middle
class millennials choosing to create and

sell illegal counterfeit opioids on the
so -called dark web for one reason.

Pure greed.

One of the first and most prolific is
Utah's Aaron Michael Shammo, a .k .a.

Pharma Master.

Aaron Shammo is born in Salt Lake City,
the youngest child and only son to a

family with three daughters.

Mr. Shammo was an average queen cut.

American kid, was raised in the faith of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter

-day Saints.

He had a fairly normal childhood, had
very, very good parents, good siblings,

had some learning issues, was popular,
wasn't bullied or particularly troubled

as a child.

But in junior high, Aaron begins to head
down a darker path, skipping school and

getting in trouble.

So his parents sent him to a strict Utah
boarding school where he seems to

excel, earning his high school diploma
and the highest Boy Scout honor, the

Eagle Scout Award for service and valor.

That was one of the things I think that
helped his family feel like, okay, he's

really turned this around. He's going to
grow up and he's going to be, I mean,

we can really be proud of.

In 2009, Shammo enrolls at Utah Valley
University.

Aaron has always been fascinated with
making it rich as an entrepreneur.

His siblings were all very successful,
and so they kind of set the bar high,

he felt like he wasn't living up to his
family's expectations. And I guess to

him, part of that was the money side, to
make money and show that you're

successful by the money you bring in.

And really interested in having sort of
the million -dollar business idea.

Reading books like Think and Grow Rich
and books like The Secret to manifest

your desires and your destiny.

But two years in, he's failing classes
and spending most of his time partying

and delving into the fledgling world of
Bitcoin mining.

So he drops out and lands an entry
-level job at eBay with his best friend,

Crandall. In less than a year, Crandall
is fired.

And Aaron Shamu thinks it's unfair that
he still has to work, so he quits.

The friends soon come up with a business
plan, combining two of their favorite

things, party drugs and Bitcoin.

They start off selling their own
prescription Adderall on the dark web.

A part of the Internet reached through a
special browser where guns and drugs

are traded and money is exchanged
through cryptocurrency.

It was really his ability to use and to
manage the cryptocurrency that helps

unlock the door for him to be able to
set up shop and become an

e -commerce pioneer, if you will, on the
dark web.

Shamo and Crandall learn all they need
on the web, searching with simple

like how to ship drugs.

Sales are immediate.

So they decide to expand, ordering drugs
in bulk, repackaging and selling at a

markup.

And he found that it was easy to
purchase controlled substances through

Internet, illegally, of course, and that
there was a huge market for that. At

first, it was drugs like Xanax or
erectile dysfunction pills because they

very popular.

A few months into the operation, a local
drug dealer gives Aaron Shammo some

intel that changes his life.

The big money is in fake oxycodone.

Opioid abuse in the United States is at
epidemic level.

In 2016, opioid abuse, and particularly
oxycontin addiction, is blowing up.

And it's getting worse by the day.

With limits on prescription pills,
thousands of people are turning to

sources.

Shammo's entrepreneurial mindset finally
has a focus, and he decides to go all

in, counterfeiting the pills himself.

Shammo orders bulk supplies, including
fentanyl from China, a much cheaper and

more potent synthetic opioid used in
counterfeit drugs.

He sets up a pill press in his basement
and watches YouTube videos to figure out

how to make fake Oxycontin and Xanax.

These kids were trying to come up with
these recipes on their own.

They weren't chemistry majors. They
found information online, and they did

through trial and error. The first batch
of pills they made were sort of turned

away because they didn't quite look like
Oxycodone. They were all splotchy and

speckled. But eventually, they got the
formula down, and that means that their

pills became incredibly popular.

Powdered binders and fillers are mixed
with fentanyl and shaken by hand.

Dyes are added.

Blue for oxys, for example.

The mixture goes into the pill press
hopper, and extruded pills are stamped

illegal counterfeit stamps, also
purchased online, to match the original

pharmaceutical markings.

It is not uncommon with any type of even
tabletop industrial pill press to be

able to produce in between 7 ,000 to 10
,000 pills an hour.

So if each pill on the street roughly
goes for, say, in between $20 to $40,

you're able to produce 7 ,000 to 10 ,000
pills an hour, and you're churning out

pills all day, you do the math.

You end up coming up with millions in
dollars of illegal drug proceeds.

Shammo calls his online storefront
PharmaMaster on one of the largest

marketplaces, AlphaBay.

which acts much like the legitimate eBay
marketplace.

Within a few months, word of
PharmaMaster's reliability and the

pills starts to spread.

Sellers like Mr. Schammel would be rated
on things like quality, price, stealth,

and that's their term for how expertly
the seller ships the drugs to avoid law

enforcement detection.

And Mr. Schammel's feedback was...

360 pages worth of positive comments.

You know, people saying he's the best
dark net vendor, period.

Business is so good that Shammo hires
his gym buddy, Luke Cass, to mix and

thousands of OxyPills a week.

He hires two friends full -time for
order fulfillment, packaging drugs in

-sealed Mylar bags, and shipping out
hundreds of orders coming in by

mail. Shammo also hires his pal Sean
Gigi as a runner, picking up the packed

orders five days a week and dropping
them off at various mailboxes around the

Salt Lake Valley.

Aaron Shammo was not your sort of bad
guy movie image of a drug ringleader.

He had lots of texting, lots of smiley
face emojis, LOLs. These were sort of

generally his friends, and the
communication reflected a lot of

between them.

No wonder Aaron Shammo is yucking it up
with his pals.

He's growing richer by the day.

But defense attorney Greg Skordas
insists that for his client, it isn't

about the money, just partly about the
money.

I know that people will not believe
this, but they really thought they were

filling a niche.

They thought that a lot of people were
needing pain medication and couldn't get

it. They were young kids, and they
really felt like they were helping

And I know that's naive, but that's
really what got them into it. And, of

course, they made a tremendous amount of
money.

Even if Shammo tells himself he's only
helping people with chronic pain, by the

summer of 2016, PharmaMaster is shipping
out up to 50 orders a day to customers

in all 50 states and is in the top 1 %
of all distributors on

AlphaBay.

Aaron Schama sees himself as a success
story, a budding young entrepreneur

growing his startup.

You both have somebody who's very
motivated and very much wants to be this

of this sort of classic American image
of a major entrepreneur somehow, but of

course did apply it to this very illegal
enterprise and did at the very least,

it appears, not examine the consequences
of what this could all bring about.

Next on American Greed, Farmer Master is
raking in profits, but not every

customer is coming back for more.

Just didn't care.

Money was too good.

Profit was too steep.

The luxuries were too high.

The problem is, is that willful
blindness translated over into death.

In a suburb of Salt Lake City, business
is booming, money is flowing in, and

packages are shipping out.

One of them will travel 2 ,200 miles and
change the recipient's lives forever.

In the quaint Long Island town of Center
Moriches on Main Street's retail row,

Tova Keblisch owns Gavin's Treasures, a
gift shop named after her only child.

In 2016, Gavin Keblisch is 23 years old
and a recent University of Albany

graduate working as a counselor for
children in foster care.

He graduated with a bachelor's, became
an incredible counselor.

basically for kids that were a little
difficult.

He understood them, he got them, and he
did it very well because he knew what it

was like to be misunderstood.

According to his mother, Gavin has
worked hard to overcome a severe ADHD

diagnosis, and he's her pride and joy.

We knew he would soar. We knew he would
make incredible difference in the world

because that's what he had.

And I knew he would do amazing things.

Gavin is also an avid motocross rider,
having picked up the sport as a kid.

But in 2015, he crashes on his bike and
suffers a severe leg injury.

After surgery, he is in excruciating
pain for months, and the surgical site

not healing.

We went back to an orthopedic, and they
said, that's your bone exposed.

And from there, he was placed in the
hospital for about three months.

Doctors try several procedures to help
Gavin heal, each one more painful than

the last.

This poor kid in his early 20s has to
live with a leg that looked like chopped

meat. And he carried on after this. He
went back to school. He graduated.

He finished.

He came home, and he was always in a lot
of pain. It was difficult for him, and

he always dismissed it.

Tova Keblish says she doesn't know that
Gavin is managing his pain with opioids.

And when his doctors pull back on the
prescriptions, Keblish turns to the dark

web. He pulls up a site called
PharmaMaster and places an order for

20 pills to be shipped to his mother's
home in Long Island.

Like every PharmaMaster order, it is
sent in an encrypted email to two

of Aaron Shammo.

Alexandria Tong and Catherine Buston,
who count out the pills in their

Utah condo, package the shipments and
hand them off to Sean Gigi, who drops

in the mail.

The envelope arrives in Long Island
three days later.

Gavin Kevlish receives the package and
makes plans to spend the weekend in the

Hamptons with his friends.

He goes, Mom, Dad, I'm just going to
stay there because he knew he was going

hang out with his friends, he was going
to be drinking.

Yeah, we were planning on taking him to
go get a new truck the next day. He's

like, I want to get a new truck. He had
his own money at the time. So we said,

okay, Saturday when you come home, we'll
go for a car.

The next day, Gavin is attending a party
in the beach town of Montauk, New York.

At some point in the night, according to
investigators, he takes a pharma master

pill.

At 6 a .m. the next morning, a passerby
sees what appears to be the body of a

young man lying in a grassy area off the
road.

Police respond and identify him as Gavin
Keblish.

Later that day, Tova Keblish learns that
her only child is gone, dead of a

fentanyl overdose.

We had found your son, and he had died.

roughly around 2 a .m., and that's all I
remember. I don't remember anything

else after that.

For a year, the family is left with
nothing but questions.

How did this happen, and why?

I will no longer have grandchildren.

I'll no longer have our own wedding for
our son.

That's rough.

That's real rough.

Not being able to see the best of what
he was.

Going forward, it grows very hard.

Yeah, it's pretty hard.

Next on American Greed.

All over the country, cases like Gavin's
are happening every day.

And the fentanyl death toll goes nowhere
but up.

Mr. Shamble is putting approximately a
milligram of fentanyl in each pill.

Two milligrams is enough to kill
someone, even with a tolerance.

Crush up and snort two pills.

You're done.

In May of 2016, 26 -year -old Aaron
Shammo is living his dream.

The college dropout has created a
startup business, hired his closest

and grown to profitability in less than
a year.

He was kind of a young, college -age
playboy. He liked to lift weights. He

to be with the girls. He liked to look
good, drive the nice cars, wear the

watch and the sporty clothes.

That was him.

He's young, living what he viewed as his
best life now.

In his personal journal, he writes
affirmations inspired by his self -help

books. I am Shamal. I am awesome.

My friends love me. I created an empire.

People look up to me.

It sort of brings to mind like almost a
combination of Breaking Bad and the

social network.

He would write these things and try to
manifest them into the world.

By the end of his first year in
business, Shamu clears nearly $3

The only catch, his business model is
totally illegal.

He's selling thousands of counterfeit
opioid pills through his dark website,

PharmaMaster. But in the rush to meet
demand, the quality of his product

to slip.

One review says, this is as close to an
overdose as I have ever come.

It just kept coming stronger and
stronger.

Another says people are getting sick,
which means people are overdosing.

But if Aaron Shammo was aware of any
problems with his product, it is not

slowing him down.

At this point, PharmaMaster is
generating roughly $100 ,000 in revenue

Shammo spends it on a house, a new BMW.

Weekend trips to Vegas and first -class
vacations. He had a heavy gambling

addiction. He loved travel. He loved
fine wines. He loved cruises,

going to the beach.

He spent money right and left, as fast
as he could get it.

By this time, Drew Crandall, who started
PharmaMaster with Shammo, is no longer

intimately involved in the business, and
Aaron Shammo is calling the shots.

Shammo ups his profits when he starts
selling in bulk, up to 20 ,000 pills at

time, to local drug dealers.

This is how authorities believe 23 -year
-old Mitch Kupner and his best friend,

23 -year -old Devin Young, come in
possession of Shamu's 30 -milligram

called RoxyOxycodone.

Kupner has spent his whole life in Woods
Cross, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake

City.

He had a tough guy cell with pretty soft
inner self. He loved to

shoot, fish, his Jeep, Boston Red Sox,
and his friends and family.

In 2016, he works as a dairy manager at
a local grocery store and is helping to

raise his girlfriend's young son.

He had moved into an apartment with his
girlfriend and her little boy.

He was looking at a promotion.

He was doing good. He was living life.
He had a good future.

His best friend, Devin Young, suffers
from depression.

Devin's mother, Kelly, says that Mitch
is Devin's biggest supporter.

But on the night of June 8, 2016, the
friends make a fateful decision.

They literally bought one oxycodone
each.

And the reason for that was my son had
been depressed, and Mitch had been

working a lot, and they thought, well,
if they each got one, they could go

they could go to sleep at their own
beds.

Get rested and maybe Devin would wake up
in a better place and, you know, Mitch

a little bit more rested.

They each take a pill and go to their
homes.

But only Devin wakes up.

Shayla Knighton is at work when she gets
a frantic call and races home.

Pulled up to the house.

I saw my then -husband throwing up on
the side of the road.

My... Then 21 -year -old son running
down the driveway

just in shock.

Three cop cars.

The officer wouldn't let me in the
house.

Shayla learns that her son Mitch has
died from a fentanyl overdose.

When they were taking Mitchell's body, I
asked to see him.

They wouldn't let me see him.

I remember my son Devin holding me up
from falling to the ground.

Mitch's friend Devin Young also took a
pill.

His mother finds him in bed.

He was still overdosing when I found
him.

You know, I did paramedics and all of
that stuff.

But, you know, after the fact he had
said that, you know.

That's all we got. We got one oxy each.
It never should have happened.

It wasn't much later that he called me
to tell me that Mitch had passed away.

This was a one pill.

This wasn't an addiction.

They didn't deserve this. They didn't
know what they were really buying.

You don't know what you're getting.

Devin never recovers from his best
friend's death.

He was an absolute mess.

It was devastating to watch.

The kid could hardly eat. He was pretty
wrecked.

Six months later, out of guilt and
feeling as if he was the cause of

death, Devin Young takes his own life.

Yes, he had made some bad choices along
the way, but the way I look at it is

they both died two different manners of
death.

But it was all for the exact same
reason.

It all came down to the fentanyl that
they bought that night.

That is ultimately what ended both of
our kids' lives.

Mitch and Devin are buried on the same
hillside in a peaceful place near the

mountains where their mothers can
contemplate what might have been.

Just thinking of what would he be doing.

Today, you know, where would he be?
Would he be in a happier place?

You know, what would he be doing?

What would his kids look like?

Would he have married the girlfriend?

It's not fair.

Today, overdose is the leading cause of
death of Americans under 50.

Next on American Greed.

Aaron Shammo's attempts to hide his
operation are about to fall short when a

customs officer IDs one of the country's
first bulk shipments of Chinese

fentanyl into the United States. To be
quite honest, it was shocking.

And the first thing on our minds was we
have to find it. We have to stop it

because literally lives are at stake.

This is a customs and border protection
mail inspection facility near LAX, where

40 million packages coming in from 180
countries pass through every year.

The International Mail Facility seizes
illicit drugs on a daily basis. This is

essentially one large seizure factory.

On the day American Greed goes inside, a
canine officer is searching for

suspicious packages containing any
number of illegal drugs, including

deadly fentanyl.

Here, the dog alerts his canine officer
by sitting down in front of a suspicious

package.

Oh, that's a good boy. That's a good
dog.

The box is removed and tested on site
using an instrument which allows the

officers to identify substances.

without having to fully open the
packages.

This is telling me right away that it
knows that this is fentanyl.

And here's the scientific name for it.

In July 2016, a package much like this
one comes in from Guangdong, China,

heading to a suburb of Salt Lake City,
Utah.

It is flagged for inspection.

Inside, the officer IDs the synthetic
opioid fentanyl.

Now well known, but at the time just
starting to hit the U .S. from China.

CBP is concerned.

They refer the case to federal agents in
Utah.

Two of my agents came in my office and
said, hey, there's a package of fentanyl

that was intercepted and it was
addressed to someone in Utah. We want to

search warrant and go see what that
person's doing.

That person is an unassuming Salt Lake
City resident, 26 -year -old Sean Gigi.

When we started doing a background on
Mr. Gigi, again, very unassuming, didn't

fit the typical profile that people view
as a drug trafficker or a drug dealer.

We did surveillance on Mr. Gigi, and we
ended up approaching him.

Gigi initially tells investigators that
he accepts packages for his friend Aaron

Shammo. and he thinks that they are
filled with ecstasy pills.

My agent said to him, those packages
that you were getting had fentanyl in

and they watched as Mr.

Gigi's countenance changed.

After thinking over his options, Gigi
agrees to cooperate.

He tells investigators that he works
full -time for Aaron Shamow.

He said, look, not only was I accepting
packages for Mr. Shambo in the mail, but

for the last several months, he hired me
to be a daily employee.

And most nights of the week, I pick up
packages off a doorstep, and I take

packages to blue post office collection
boxes throughout the community, and he

pays me a biweekly wage to do it.

And so the agents asked him to do two
things. The first was...

put on a wire, and have a conversation
with Mr. Shammo. And he did.

They met face -to -face.

Geeky is recording when he arrives at
Aaron Shammo's house.

What up, man?

How you doing? Good. How's it going?

Good. We went live yesterday.

Are you able to pick up tonight?

Yeah. I missed last night because I had
a bit of an emergency, but I'll do

double duty tonight and get them both
out. Awesome.

Turned out it was payday that night, so
it worked out real well.

Mr. Shamal paid Mr. Gigi, and then Mr.
Shamal and Mr. Gigi talked about their

future plans.

And Shamal related that he wanted to
expand his operation, and he wanted Gigi

to move to Colorado and start building a
foundational enterprise there.

So March or April, let's aim for that
for Colorado.

So start looking for places.

You want to get like a separate room
that basically is just dedicated for

That's what I would suggest.

That way you're not bothered. That's
what my current shippers do. They

just have one room that they dedicate
to.

So if you can, that would be great.

Okay, okay.

Next, Gigi allows Asians to follow as he
picks up 79 packages from the shipper's

doorstep. to mail to PharmaMaster
customers.

This time, however, he doesn't drop them
in the post boxes.

He scooped them up and then drove with
the agents immediately to a local police

station where they could set them out on
tables and start to go through it. And

as they opened these boxes, you know,
they found 10 ,000 fentanyl pills in a

box, 20 ,000 pills in a box.

Aaron Shammo's operation was nothing
like I had ever seen.

Mr. Shambo's enterprise was one of the
first large -scale dark web storefronts

that we had dealt with.

At one point, I know we were able to
identify over 8 ,000 package recipients

across the continental United States.

We had to act quickly.

Our number one goal was to locate where
are the tablets being manufactured.

Next on American Greed.

Utah agents find what they're looking
for in their own backyard and move in on

the pharma master.

Aaron Schema was at home, apparently in
his basement, when authorities literally

came bashing down his front door.

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We'll be right back.

Two days before Thanksgiving, dozens of
agents from the DEA, Homeland Security

Investigations, and the National Guard
sued up for a surprise drug bust on an

unlikely residential block.

Cottonwood Heights is kind of a sleepy
little upper middle class suburban area

south of Salt Lake. The last
neighborhood that I honestly thought I

doing a search warrant in for a
counterfeit cabling enterprise.

Those seizing evidence at Aaron Shammo's
home don hazmat suits to avoid direct

contact with fentanyl, which is so
powerful, a few flakes touching the skin

caused officers to overdose.

They called him out, pulled him out, and
placed him under arrest.

Inside, there was a pill press running,
just a rotary pill press just pounding

away. They saw powder all over the
walls.

The room was full of mason jars.

That's how they were mixing their
ingredients to go into the pills. They

in a mason jar, screw the lid on, and
shake it.

Agent sees $1 .2 million in cash from a
sock drawer and another $429 ,000

stored at Shamo's parents' house.

But it took them a lot longer actually
to find one of his biggest sources of

cash, and that was Bitcoin.

They eventually found 500 Bitcoin.

that were linked to his account. At the
time, it was worth a couple hundred

thousand dollars.

Eventually, the government sells
Shammo's Bitcoin for more than $5

Across town, agents execute a search
warrant at the apartment of Alexandria

and Catherine Buston, Shammo's shippers.

He brought them in to help do the
packaging.

They would put them in envelopes and
then send them to whoever around the

country had ordered them.

They were working so fast, when pills
would drop on the ground, they would

vacuum them up. They weren't even worth
picking up.

When Shammo's friend and former partner
Drew Crandall learns of the arrest from

overseas, he quickly shuts down the
Farmer Master store on Alpha Bay.

But investigators have already got what
they need. From another one of Shammo's

friends and customer service employees,
24 -year -old Mario Noble.

Mr. Noble, because he did customer
service, had access to some of

pages on AlphaBay, and so the agents
went in with him and took screenshots,

trying to preserve the evidence that was
online so we wouldn't lose it.

Six months later, Drew Crandall is
arrested upon arriving in Hawaii, where

planned to get married.

In all, eight of Shamu's other co
-conspirators are arrested and all agree

cooperate with the government.

Next on American Greed.

While prosecutors build their case, they
begin to compile a list of customers

who purchased pills through PharmaMaster
and uncover a pattern unlike any they

had ever seen.

Today, we've identified 90 of his
customers who died from drug overdoses.

Two years after his arrest, Aaron Shammo
is set to stand trial, accused of 12

drug counts, including leading a
continuing criminal enterprise,

referred to as the kingpin charge, which
carries a mandatory life sentence, and

one count for the overdose death of 21
-year -old Ruslan Kluyev of California.

Our focus at trial was that...

Two most serious offenses that the grand
jury charged Mr. Shammo with. The first

was engaging in a continuing criminal
enterprise.

And then the second was the distribution
of fentanyl that resulted in a man's

death.

Evidence from Shammo's computers has led
investigators to at least 90

PharmaMaster customers that died of
fentanyl overdose.

We could track Shammo's orders and just
through searching obituaries and talking

to law enforcement in different areas,
confirm OD deaths from Mr. Shammo's

pills.

Of the 90 cases prosecutors believe are
tied to Shammo's pills, they decide to

charge him with the Kluyev case because
of the evidence, including a photo from

the death scene showing the victim's
body.