C. Aliens 
A man has been sentenced for making and shipping more than 4 million fake Xanax pills.
Stephen Caamano produced an estimated 4.3 million counterfeit anti-anxiety pills out of his Champaign, il home and shipped them out via U.S. mail.
Caamano has been sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Caamano pleaded guilty in April to federal charges stemming from a fake Xanax production scheme he ran between March 2017 and May 2018 out of his home in the 1500 block of Glenshire Dr. The home is in an upscale Champaign, il neighborhood.
His charges included distribution of a controlled substance, money laundering and engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from unlawful activity, the News Gazette reported.
Caamano was involved in importing Alprazolam, the active ingredient in the trademarked Xanax, from China. He used a pill press to make tablets that looked like Xanax.
Packages of the pills were mailed through the U.S. mail to customers.
His mail carrier registered a complaint with supervisors after Caamano’s mailings from area drop boxes became so frequent and large.
Caamano had an undergraduate degree in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley.
He attended the doctoral program at the UI in Urbana for one semester before his grades started dropping and he left school.
Police started looking into him in 2016 when they learned he was buying pill presses from China.
Caamano’s attorney said he had a history of depression that stemmed from living in New York during the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the twin towers. The News Gazette reports he used Xanax himself too.
Caamano’s sales of the fake pills is estimated to be about $44.76 million.
Caamano sold many of the pills using the dark web and said he that money was cryptocurrency. He said he was not able to access those accounts and retrieve the money, because the passwords had expired while he was in custody and he could not renew them.
The judge planned to enter a forfeiture order of about $2.1 million in money and property that Caamano will have to give the government. The News Gazette reports that includes some of his profits, his home, vehicle, and the contents of a bank account.
He was not ordered to pay restitution.
