Eight hours before the raid on his alleged drug lab in a luxury New York City apartment, Brian Parker was panicking on Reddit.
“Tomorrow about 1pm I will be canceling all orders on both sites before 8/27,” Parker wrote of two websites that he allegedly used to sell synthetic designer drugs disguised as laboratory materials, federal authorities announced in charges on Tuesday. Drug Enforcement Agency officials and New York State Police raided Parker’s high-rise apartment in Queens wearing Hazmat suits, arresting him and an alleged accomplice. The apartment-turned-drug lab was the epicenter of a sprawling opioid market that led to at least one customer’s death, federal authorities charge.
Parker’s websites, RCPowders and UnbeatableChems offer a buffet of synthetic opioids and hallucinogens, which customers can buy with Bitcoin, Amazon.com cards, or Hotels.com vouchers. Both websites carry a disclaimers stating “the chemicals/materials/peptides for sale here are intended for laboratory and research use only, unless otherwise explicitly stated. They are not intended for human ingestion, use, or for use in products that may be ingested.”
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But for multiple clients, the drugs allegedly led to real disaster.
“It almost killed my son. He shot that synthetic liquid heroin up in his veins,” Keith Caison of North Carolina told The Daily Beast. Caison said his son had purchased the drugs online and overdosed. “I got the police over there, because all those bottles he ordered were laying there on the bed,” Caison said, adding that police “said it wasn’t against the law. That’s how [Parker] gets by with this. He sells it as experimental drugs, not really heroin or anything like that … He’s changing the chemistry so they can be sold as an experimental drug.”
UnbeatableChems also doxxed customers who failed to produce a payment, a policy that resulted in Caison’s personal information being displayed on the website. Caison, who said his son bought drugs under his name, had his name, phone number, and home address published alongside alleged buyers on the publicly available “SHAME” wall.
But on Reddit, other customers complained that Parker’s amateur pharmacy was blowing up in their faces.
“When I went to stir with a metal knife it literally exploded in my face,” one Reddit user complained of Parker’s “etiz,” a powerful liquid sedative sold on UnbeatableChems. Parker replied that the drug couldn’t have been bad, as he had just “made 2 gallons yesterday with the same batch just fine.”
Parker’s alleged tinkering is a tactic drug experts have witnessed over the past decade, Stefanie Jones, a staffer with the Drug Policy Alliance told The Daily Beast.
“That’s why there’s been a range in novel substances in the last decade or so,” Jones said. “Our drug laws have pushed a diversity of substances available on the market and it’s going to keep continuing until we address root causes, because there’s any number of ways you can tweak a drug. In some ways it’s becoming riskier because with old drugs you used to know the risks, but new ones you might not know the risks.”
But the operation began crumbling when Parker’s chemicals contributed to a death, federal authorities charge.
In May 2016, police in Madison, Wisconsin discovered a 37-year-old man unresponsive in his home, according to a criminal complaint. An autopsy ruled his death an overdose, the combined effects of “etiz” and U-47700, a powerful opioid that is legal if sold as a laboratory chemical. In the man’s home, law enforcement found vials of U-47700 which the man had recently received in the mail, alongside invoices from the UnbeatableChems.
Law enforcement traced the package’s return address to a New Jersey postal box in Parker’s name. Armed with Parker’s name and information from the UnbeatableChems website, federal officials began investigating his alleged operations. The hunt took them to Parker’s Reddit page where, in the name of customer service, Parker was transparent.
Though he never revealed his name on Reddit, Parker was always forthright about where he lived. When customers complained about delayed deliveries, Parker frequently blamed New York City traffic. “I cant get out. Im waiting ppl driving from my building getting stuck,” he complained five months before his arrest. “If there is no cabs in front of my place ( im in NYC ) that means its BAD.”
“This happens ALL the time here in NYC,” he claimed more recently, when a customer complained of shipping delays.
Angry customers weren’t Parker’s only readers. Twice in June 2017, Parker posted to Reddit that he would be taking the day off to transport all his inventory to a business associate, whom law enforcement suspected was Victoria Koleski, a 29-year-old New Jersey woman. The second time Parker posted about his day off, law enforcement hid outside his Queens apartment, where they spotted him leaving with a white garbage bag, which he dropped off at Koleski’s home, according to the criminal complaint. Two days later, on June 30, Koleski was spotted at a local post office placing several garbage bags in the mail.
When law enforcement seized and searched the parcels inside the bags, they found synthetic PCP and the hallucinogen A-PVP. Investigators also purchased and received three orders from Parker in late July, and payed with a money order form, which Parker cashed under his own name.
But even three days before his arrest, Parker was on Reddit boasting of his invincibility.
“A lot of vendors sell illegal chemicals on the side or darknet. This is their downfall,” he wrote, in response to a Redditor who complained of difficulty obtaining drugs online after raids against dark web markets. “Another is not paying to have a legal team. Looks at the few vendors left that are not new. What do we have in common. We pay lawyers to watch our back.”
Three days later, law enforcement were raiding his waterfront highrise in Hazmat suits. Contacted by The Daily Beast on Tuesday, the property’s management declined to comment on the drug bust. A building resident said he had no idea the highrise contained an alleged drug lab.
Caison said he was glad for the arrest, but that he wished he could speak to Parker about the effect his drugs allegedly had on Caison’s family.
“It’s about time,” Caison said. “I wish he’d just come see me. He’s selling drugs to kids.”
