A federal judge in Chicago sentenced the world’s most prolific online drug dealer to 10 years in prison Thursday.
Cornelis Jan “SuperTrips” Slomp, 23, was arrested in Miami in 2013 and pleaded guilty last year. That’s when he admitted he sold more illegal drugs than anyone else on the now-shuttered underground website “Silk Road” — described by a federal prosecutor Thursday as “an illegal version of Amazon.com.”
The young Slomp quickly amassed more than $3 million in bitcoins selling MDMA, ecstacy, cocaine, LSD and other drugs. The college graduate and former software engineer had rented a Lamborghini and was ready to make a splash on South Beach’s party scene when he was arrested by the feds at Miami International Airport.
But Thursday, he told U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly he was “ashamed and embarrassed.” He said he never felt happy before his arrest — despite living with his girlfriend and landing a “great” job — adding that he had quickly become addicted to drugs. He said he justified his activity by telling himself others made the their own decision to use drugs.
Kennelly said he’d recommend Slomp serve his sentence in a Dutch prison.
Equipped with only a laptop, an iPhone and a backpack, Slomp shipped 14 kilos of MDMA, 566,000 ecstacy pills and four kilos of cocaine and other drugs through the mail, using the online moniker “SuperTrips.”
Some drugs ended up in Chicago, but Slomp shipped to almost every continent, boasting he had “big stockpiles of product, you literally cannot empty me out.”
On Silk Road, where anonymous traders sold illegal drugs and other illicit products, he developed a reputation for ecstasy pills marked with his logo, a green question mark. He was planning to hand off his U.S. business to an unnamed associate who went by the nickname “Underground syndicate” when he was arrested.
“I don’t think any of this could have happened without the anonymity of the Internet,” Slomp told the judge Thursday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros said Slomp not only cooperated with the American and Dutch authorities after his arrest, he also turned over the keys to his online “SuperTrips” identity.
Silk Road’s collapse in October 2013 followed the arrest in San Francisco of its founder, Ross William Ulbricht, who went by “Dread Pirate Roberts.” Ulbricht was in February convicted in a New York federal court of drug trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering.
Slomp was willing to testify but ultimately wasn’t called in that case, Boutros said.
