Second Of Five Spice Conspirators Sentenced

BOISE – Troy Palmer, 43, of Boise, Idaho, was sentenced today to 40 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release for conspiring to launder money, U.S. Attorney Wendy J. Olson announced. U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge also ordered Palmer to pay a $2,000 fine, and a $100 special assessment. He pleaded guilty on February 10, 2014.

According to court documents, Palmer and three co-conspirators, Mark Ciccarello, William Mabry, and Robert Eoff, conspired to purchase and import from China chemicals known as AM2201, UR-144, and XLR11, which they used to treat innocuous plant matter to make spiceCa synthetic cannabinoid similar to substances—including JWH018—listed in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. The Indictment alleged that they conspired to launder money illegally obtained through spice manufacturing and distribution.

Palmer admitted that he knowingly entered into a conspiracy with co-conspirators to conduct financial transactions in connection with a “spice” manufacturing and distribution business beginning in March 2011. Palmer also admitted to knowingly participating and assisting in the financial activity of the business by engaging in bank and other financial transactions, through both domestic and foreign financial institutions. The transactions consisted of the proceeds of prior illegal spice sales and other specified unlawful activity and, in many cases, the transactions conducted through financial institutions separately consisted of criminally derived property of a value greater than $10,000; most of the transactions occurred in Idaho, Washington and California.

William Mabry was sentenced on May 21, 2014, to 24 months in prison and ordered to pay $80,000 in restitution. Robert Eoff was sentenced July 10, 2014, to 26 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release. The one remaining co-conspirator, Mark Ciccarello, is scheduled to be sentenced on September 8, 2014.

The case is the result of a joint investigation of the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), which included the cooperative law enforcement efforts of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation, Boise Police Department, Meridian Police Department, Ada County Sheriff’s Office, Canyon County Sheriff’s Office, and Nampa Police Department. Other federal agencies participating in the OCEDTF program include the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and U.S. Marshals Service.

The OCDETF program is a federal, multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional task force that supplies supplemental federal funding to federal and state agencies involved in the identification, investigation, and prosecution of major drug trafficking organizations.