New York: A 20-year-old young American man has been sentenced to more than nine years in prison for selling deadly toxins online to buyers in countries like India and aiding an Indian-origin woman in the UK to kill her mother.
Jesse William Korff of Florida, was sentenced by US District Judge Anne Thompson in Trenton New Jersey yesterday.
Kroff pleaded guilty in August 2014 to charges of producing and smuggling the deadly toxins ricin and abrin and conspiring to kill a person in a foreign country.
Federal agents in New Jersey uncovered Korff's illicit activities during a 2013 probe of Internet sales of toxins on a web-based marketplace called "Black Market Reloaded (BMR)," federal prosecutors said.
Using the tagname "Snowman840," Korff advertised deadly toxins for sale and offered prospective buyers advice on how much poison it would take to kill a person of a certain weight, NJ.Com reported.
In December 2013, prosecutors say Korff provided the toxin abrin to a London woman who allegedly intended to poison and kill her mother.
The woman, a Barclays Banker named Kuntal Patel, allegedly fantasised about killing her mother, who broke up her engagement, after watching "Breaking Bad."
"Jesse Korff peddled his poison in a shadowy, online network favored by cybercriminals," New Jersey US Attorney Paul Fishman said.
"He also offered guidance on its effective use and his sentence today appropriately took account of his participation with an overseas customer in an attempted murder plot."
Thompson sentenced Korff to 110 months in prison.
Korff admitted in court today that he developed methods to extract abrin and ricin from the seeds of plants.
He sold quantities of the toxins to buyers in India, Austria, Denmark and England by concealing them in packages he sent through the US mail.
Abrin is found in the seeds of the tropical rosary pea plant and is similar to ricin, a poison that comes from castor beans. Abrin is used in medical research because of its potential to kill cancer cells, but it also is a deadly poison for which there is no antidote.
A small dose of the toxin inhaled, ingested or injected causes death within 72 hours.
