A Pennsylvania man convicted of selling fentanyl online — drugs that prosecutors say caused the overdose deaths of at least 29 people — was sentenced Monday in Portland to life in federal prison.
Henry Konah Koffie, 38, sold a fentanyl derivative called furanyl fentanyl, a synthetic drug with no medical use. Between September 2015 and his arrest outside Philadelphia in July 2017, Koffie made 7,849 separate transactions, selling the drug in all 50 states.
In Oregon, law enforcement linked Koffie to three overdoses, two of which ended in death. In March, a jury in Portland convicted Koffie on several felonies, including two counts of distribution of a controlled substance resulting in the death of an adult.
“He’s pedaling death, knowing that he’s killing people,” Senior U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mosman said as he imposed Koffie’s sentence Monday. “He did it for money, and he enjoyed making a lot of money. While young, almost children, were choking on their own vomit to death, he was having a good time.”
Officers with the Portland Police Bureau, Homeland Security Investigations and U.S. Postal Inspection Services worked together to investigate three overdoses in Portland in 2016 and 2017.
They found Koffie sold fentanyl in 2017, which resulted in the deaths of two 27-year-old men in Portland. They also linked him to the 2016 near-fatal opiate overdose of a 19-year-old Portland State University student; a doctor testified at trial that the student was “critically ill” and faced a “substantial risk of death” after she was taken to the emergency department at Oregon Health & Sciences University and treated for acute respiratory distress from an opiate overdose.
Koffie received fentanyl in the mail from suppliers in China, according to prosecutors. He then would advertise on AlphaBay, a former dark web site, and ship the drugs through the mail to customers across the country. He sold a total of 19.5 kilograms of furanyl fentanyl under the names “DNMKingpin” and later as “NarcoBoss.”
Investigators linked Koffie’s sales with overdose deaths in at least 15 states, including Idaho, Texas, Florida, Hawaii, California, New York, Minnesota and Ohio.
“In addition to the three Oregon overdoses he was convicted of causing, investigators identified 27 other people across the United States who ordered furanyl fentanyl from the defendant and shortly thereafter overdosed and died, as well as another 27 people who overdosed but lived,” federal prosecutors stated in court documents.
Scott Kerin, an assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the case, called the drug Koffie was selling poison.
“From our perspective, Henry Koffie was on the forefront of a wave of fentanyl that has just swept across the United States,” Kerin said later. Today, people with substance abuse disorders are more likely to purchase fake prescription pills made of illicit fentanyl from street dealers, he said.
“The dark web is still out there. It’s still happening, it’s still a source of fatal fentanyl overdoses,” Kerin said. “You just have this other huge area of how fentanyl is getting to people.”
Koffie’s defense attorney asked Mosman not to sentence Koffie to life in prison.
“Life is redeemable,” James Halley told the judge. “There is always the possibility of redemption. We ask that you not impose the life sentence.”
Mosman acknowledged he was taking an extraordinary measure.
“It is a rare case that warrants a life sentence,” Mosman said. “Sometimes the callousness and the cruelty with which a defendant commits crime that kills others merits the highest sentence.”
Copyright 2023 Oregon Public Broadcasting.