This week, the same publishers, including Penguin Random House, Elsevier, and HarperCollins, filed a new complaint at the same court, this time with the relatively young pirate library WeLib as the target.
Again, the stakes are substantial, with the publishers seeking up to $19.5 million in potential damages for direct copyright infringement.
A New Entrant
The similarities don’t stop at the legal arguments and stakes. Anna’s Archive already highlighted the newcomer in a blog post last year, describing WeLib as a “new entrant” in the space that had copied both its collection and its code.
“They appear to have mirrored most of our collection, and use a fork of our codebase,” Anna’s Archive noted.
The same blog post was also critical of WeLib for not contributing back to the ecosystem and recommended that people avoid using the site.
From Anna’s blog post
This week, the publishers also warn against using the site, albeit for different reasons. Their complaint accuses WeLib’s unnamed and anonymous operators of widespread copyright infringement, while also confirming that connection to Anna’s Archive.
“Defendants’ entire business is the illegal copying and distribution of literary works,” the complaint notes, adding that “WeLib was created after its operators copied the source code and most of the contents of the Notorious Pirate Site, Anna’s Archive.”
Not a Library
WeLib describes itself as an “endless library” founded on the principle that “education and literature belong to everyone.” The publishers, however, clearly don’t agree with the library framing, noting libraries can be trusted; pirate sites not.
“Libraries are trusted institutions that serve the communities that fund them by lending books and other publications they have lawfully acquired. Using this label for WeLib explicitly misleads the public and allows WeLib to hijack the goodwill that libraries enjoy and have legitimately earned.”
“WeLib is no more than a pirate website that reproduces and distributes works of authorship owned by others to users for a profit, without authorization from or compensation to the copyright owners,” the complaint adds.
WeLib.org
The complaint notes that WeLib’s operators made efforts to keep their identities hidden. However, the site itself quickly became a go-to portal for many book pirates.
The complaint notes that, by WeLib’s own account, its collection includes 43 million books and 98 million articles. The site reportedly has over 80,000 active monthly users who accessed more than 51.7 million books and downloaded 14.5 million files last month.
While the site can be used for free, users can pay for fast downloads and to skip the queue. Subscriptions start at $7 per month for 25 fast downloads and 25 fast reads per day; while the top tier costs $90 a month for 1,000 daily downloads.
Staggering Scale
These payments, or “donations” as WeLib calls them, can be made through cryptocurrency, WeChat, and Alipay. They are allegedly processed through a company called Malum.co, which offers payment services to high-risk vendors, without the need for any KYC identity checks.
Damages and Domain Seizures
The complaint lists a sample of 130 copyrighted works as evidence. This mirrors the Anna’s Archive lawsuit, where the court awarded $150,000 per work, which is the statutory maximum, resulting in a total of $19.5 million.
In addition to the monetary damages, the publishers are also seeking a permanent injunction that aims to take the site offline. They ask the court to order third-party registries, registrars, and hosting providers to disable WeLib’s domains and render them untransferable.
Domain Names Targeted
This also includes a specific request to disable the authoritative nameserver for the .st domain, registered through Njalla, a Costa Rica-based registrar that is not necessarily responsive to U.S. court orders.
The AI Training Conundrum
As with other recent publisher lawsuits, the complaint also mentions AI training. Specifically, it alleges that WeLib supplies copyright infringing data to AI companies.
“WeLib has also been an illegal supplier of stolen content to the AI industry. In a recent lawsuit, publishers alleged that Meta utilized WeLib to train their Llama models,” the complaint reads.
The recent lawsuit they refer to is Elsevier Inc. v. Meta Platforms which is filed by several of the same publishers through the same law firm, Oppenheim + Zebrak. However, what that complaint actually says about WeLib is more specific and not in line with the current case.
The Elsevier v. Meta complaint describes WeLib as a source found within C4 training dataset Meta used, but identifies it as “formerly known as PDF Drive.” This dataset was built years ago from a Common Crawl snapshot and predates WeLib and even Anna’s Archive.
From Elsevier v. Meta
More confusingly, the complaint against WeLib that was filed this week makes no mention of it formerly being known as “PDF Drive”, or the C4 dataset for that matter.
According to our knowledge, there is no evidence that content hosted by WeLib was included in the C4 database. All we can confirm is that the database does include “PDF Drive” data and that the pdfdrive.com domain redirected to the new WeLib site at some point.
PDF Drive is a long-running PDF hosting site that has operated for years, predating Anna’s Archive entirely. It has no documented connection to Anna’s Archive’s codebase or collection. Whether it shares more than a domain redirect with the WeLib now being sued is unclear.
The publishers’ framing of WeLib as an active AI training pipeline may be backed up with further evidence later, or not. For now, WeLib has yet to respond. However, since anonymous operators typically don’t show up in court, this case may also copy Anna’s Archive’s path, heading to a default judgment.
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A copy of the complaint, filed by Oppenheim + Zebrak on behalf of the thirteen plaintiff publishers, is available here (pdf).
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Israel’s government asked Meta to censor social media content about its ongoing war against Iran, according to internal documents viewed by The Intercept.
Company records show that Israel petitioned Meta to take down Facebook and Instagram posts expressing support for Iran, opposition to Israel, and even depictions of Iranian missile impacts.
The government flagged a variety of materials related to the war, including posts mourning the death of Ayatollah Khamenei following his assassination by the U.S. and Israel on the opening day of the conflict, content supportive of Iran’s retaliatory attacks, and Iranian accounts that shared military analysis and propaganda sympathetic to the Iranian regime’s perspective.
“Governments wanting to suppress speech that is critical of their war efforts is as old as time.”
In some cases, Meta complied with the censorship requests, the records show, though it is unclear on what grounds. Meta maintains that it only removes content as required by law or materials that violate its speech policies.
When asked how many Iran-related takedown requests had been granted to date since the war began, the company did not answer. The Israeli Ministry of Justice, which submits takedown requests to social media platforms, did not respond to a request for comment.
Israel’s social media lobbying is not new; for years the nation has leaned on its close relationship with Meta to push for targeted enforcement of the company’s content moderation rulebook.
Israel’s Office of the State Attorney routinely lodges complaints to social media platforms on behalf of state security agencies about content deemed illegal or said to promote “terrorism,” according to its website. In the documents reviewed by The Intercept, the office in some cases made no claim that the social media content violated Israeli law. Instead, the office asked that posts or accounts should be removed because they were in violation of Meta’s content moderation rulebook.
Meta, for instance, designates Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a “Dangerous Organization,” and prohibits users from engaging in many forms of positive speech about its actions. This means posts supportive of retaliatory missile launches by the IRGC, for instance, could run afoul of the company’s rules. No such prohibition exists for users who post favorably about the U.S. or Israeli militaries.
Meta did not respond to questions about the Iran war requests, but spokesperson Daniel Roberts provided a statement to The Intercept. “Anyone is able to report content they think violates our rules. Regardless of who or how a piece of content is flagged, we assess it based on our policies, which govern what is and isn’t allowed on our platform. It is wrong and irresponsible to imply that these requests are in any way unusual or improper.”
A company headquartered in California can determine what is or is not permissible speech for billions of users across the world, only a fraction of whom are American.
Meta has faced scrutiny, specifically in the Middle East, for removing content that doesn’t violate the company’s rules. A 2022 audit commissioned by the company itself found discrepancies in its content moderation practices between Arabic and Hebrew content. “Arabic content had greater over-enforcement (e.g., erroneously removing Palestinian voice) on a per user basis.” the company found. A 2023 report by the company’s inhouse Oversight Board described the “over-enforcement” of the company’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals blacklist, disproportionately composed of Muslim and Middle Eastern entities.
Meta has long claimed that as an American company, it is legally required to sometimes remove content pertaining to certain entities sanctioned by the U.S., such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But legal scholars say that has little to no precedent or basis in existing sanctions law, which focus on matters of material support rather than political speech. It’s a policy that has created an immense ideological slant: A company headquartered in California can determine what is or is not permissible speech for billions of users across the world, only a fraction of whom are American.
Further adding to the imbalance when it comes to Middle East crises is the fact that Meta has granted Israel privileged access to its content moderation policy teams. In 2024, The Intercept reported how Meta employee Jordana Cutler, a former aide to Benjamin Netanyahu, served as a dedicated liaison to the Israeli government, advocating for the country’s interests and helping facilitate the removal of unwanted speech. Few other countries in the world have a dedicated representative within Meta — in 2020, a similar policy head for India market resigned after revelations she had lobbied for rule enforcement that favored India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party. Asked if Cutler has had a role in facilitating Israeli takedown requests of content relating to the war, Meta did not respond.
“Meta’s close relationship with the Israeli government for takedown requests has been a long-standing issue,” Evelyn Douek, a Stanford Law School professor and scholar of digital speech policies, told The Intercept. “Meta’s acquiescence in lots of takedown requests has been a long-standing practice.”
These asymmetries of censorship power are particularly sensitive during times of war, said Douek.
“Governments wanting to suppress speech that is critical of their war efforts is as old as time,” she said. “Allowing governments to claim national security reasons to suppress speech willy-nilly would obliterate the value of speech protections.”
According to a source familiar with the matter, Israel lobbied Meta to implement a blanket rule restricting imagery of war damage within its territory, mirroring an Israeli news media censorship policy that bars journalists from documenting weapon impacts without military approval. Meta has so far declined to implement such a policy for its billions of global users, the source said. Meta did not respond to questions about the status of this request.
The U.S. and Iran signaled this week that a ceasefire agreement is imminent, though Israel has suggested it would not abide by the terms of a deal. While many of the censorship requests directly addressed the war, others were tangential to the conflict itself. The records show Israel has pushed to remove content expressing outrage over last month’s storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque by far-right government minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. It also sought to stifle posts critical of rhetoric by Israel that linked Israel’s recent closure of Al-Aqsa with the ongoing war.
In general, Meta grants the vast majority of Israeli governmental takedown requests.
In general, Meta grants the vast majority of Israeli governmental takedown requests. The State Attorney’s Office boasted a 92 percent compliance rate in 2023, and a 2025 report by Drop Site News said the overall rate has climbed to 94 percent since the October 7 attack by Hamas.
Records reviewed by The Intercept show Israel asked for Iran war takedowns using the exact same language evoking Hamas’s October 7 attack that it submitted when requesting the censorship of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli speech across the globe during Israel’s war on Gaza.
“It suggests that they don’t expect their requests are being reviewed very carefully,” Douek said.
Douek argued that the wartime censorship requests underscore the danger of policing speech entirely out of public view through “opaque processes” like governmental backchannels.
“These companies … have been responsive to their own geopolitical and commercial interests, and have always been more responsive to powerful governments.”
“These platforms have always maintained that they are neutral, or that they are just a platform for people to express their views, but it has long been true that these companies have always presented a particular view of the world and have been responsive to their own geopolitical and commercial interests, and have always been more responsive to powerful governments,” Douek said.
This creates a deeply lopsided dynamic when it comes to the Iran war: The two arguably best-represented governments in the world within Meta — the U.S. and Israel — are allied belligerents in a conflict against a state deeply sanctioned by the company’s speech rules. “You’re going to end up with a skewed debate,” Douek said.
In high school, Ashley Delgado dreamed of becoming a doctor and one day buying her father a Rolls-Royce. “She wanted to heal people,” said her father, James Taylor. She had a high GPA, Taylor added, and did especially well in science and Latin.
In her mid-20s, Ashley suffered a leg injury and was prescribed OxyContin. The painkiller marked the beginning of a yearslong descent through addiction — from prescription opioids to methamphetamine, then heroin, and finally, fentanyl.
With her family’s support, Ashley spent time in a rehabilitation facility in her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, and in recovery she moved into a sober living home. But on an early summer morning in 2023, Ashley’s body was found on a dead-end street just outside the city. One sandal was missing. Tucked inside her bra was a folded scrap of paper containing a tan powder. She was 29.
Ashley Delgado died in August 2023. Source: Supplied
“I have lost my father, my grandmother — that hurts,” Taylor said. “But when you lose your child, that’s the worst thing on the planet, because they’re not supposed to go before you.”
Toxicology tests would later show a mix of substances in Ashley’s system, including protonitazene and metonitazene, powerful synthetic opioids from a little-known class of drugs known as nitazenes. Her death was ruled accidental.
Before his daughter’s fatal overdose, Taylor had never heard of nitazenes. Developed in the 1950s as potential painkillers, the drugs never reached the market because they were deemed unsafe for medical use. He was shocked to learn they could be up to 40 times more potent than fentanyl and 500 times stronger than heroin.
Nitazenes are predominantly sold online, both on the clear web and dark web, and are often laced into other substances to increase their potency. Experts say this puts unsuspecting users seeking more common drugs, such as oxycodone, fentanyl, or stimulants like cocaine, at risk of fatal overdoses.
Left: Ashley, aged about 5, with her father James Taylor in Cleveland, Ohio. Right: Ashley and her dog, Gucci, after graduating from high school in 2012. Source: Supplied
The US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) started tracking nitazene-related seizures around 2014, but it wasn’t until 2019 that it saw a marked increase. Since then, federal authorities have scheduled dozens of nitazenes as illegal substances, launched undercover operations, filed indictments, and imposed tariffs on China, where many of the laboratories manufacturing and supplying nitazenes and fentanyl are known to reside.
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Yet, figures provided to Bellingcat by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) show the United States has reported 26 different kinds of nitazenes since 2019 — the second highest number globally, after Canada.
And data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on nitazene-involved overdose deaths suggest that cases continue to rise. More than 1,100 fatalities have been confirmed through the CDC’s State Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System (SUDORS), but experts believe the number of Americans who have died from them since 2019 could be as high as 2,000.
Alex Krotulski, the director of the Centre for Forensic Science Research and Education in Pennsylvania, told Bellingcat that deaths are underreported because nitazenes were not routinely tested for.
“There are only limited forensic toxicology labs that test for nitazenes, so if a nitazene was present and the lab didn’t test for it, the number wouldn’t appear in SUDORS,” he said. “Also, for labs that do test for nitazenes, they have missed cases prior to their testing.” The most recent years for which there is CDC data, 2023 and 2024, show they were the deadliest, with 747 confirmed deaths.
A Bellingcat investigation last year found more than 1,000 nitazenes advertisements populating online marketplaces, forums and the dark web. Source: Bellingcat
In this months-long open source investigation, Bellingcat combed through dozens of criminal court proceedings, filed national, state, and county-level Freedom of Information requests, and obtained scores of medical examiner reports to produce the most detailed account yet of how nitazenes are infiltrating US borders and destroying lives.
The investigation found that, despite efforts to curb their spread across the country, nitazenes are proliferating online. It also shows that, by the time nitazenes reach American users, they are almost always mixed with several other drugs, including methamphetamines, cocaine and, most notably, fentanyl.
As of this year, 48 of 50 US states have reported nitazene seizures.
Less Fentanyl, More Nitazenes
Fentanyl is by far the biggest opioid killer in the US. With more than a quarter of a million deaths since 2021 and about 200 fatalities a day, fentanyl is one of the country’s most urgent public health crises. But drug experts warn that nitazenes can be even more potent and are being mixed with fentanyl and other substances, creating increasingly lethal combinations.
The Faces of Fentanyl memorial exhibit, at the DEA’s headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, displays more than 7,000 photos of people who have lost their lives to fentanyl poisoning or overdose. Source: DEA
“We’re always concerned about fentanyl being mixed in with other drugs — cocaine, meth, heroin,” said Frank Tarentino, Associate Chief of Operations for the DEA’s Northeast Region. “You add nitazenes to that and it makes it exponentially more dangerous and frightening for drug law enforcement, parents, caregivers, educators, and the young.”
Data obtained from the DEA’s National Forensic Laboratory Information System (NFLIS) show reports of confirmed seizures of nitazenes rising sharply — from 43 positive tests in 2019 to almost 2,000 in 2024 (the most recent year for which figures are available). By March this year, more than 8,000 nitazene reports had been recorded since 2019. But experts said that not all laboratories can test for nitazenes — which come in many forms including powders, pills, and sprays — and many don’t feed into the NFLIS system, meaning these numbers are almost certainly an underestimate.
We asked the DEA for a breakdown of reports of nitazenes by state. Ashley Delgado’s home state of Ohio stands out. NFLIS data from 2019 to 2024 indicate that more than a third of all positive nitazene laboratory reports nationally are linked to Ohio.
Separate data from the CDC shows Ohio has also recorded the highest number of nitazene-related overdose deaths in the US since 2021. In 2020, there were just four fatalities linked to the drug; in 2021 that number rose to 90. Between 2022 and 2024, according to government data, there were 200 more deaths.
“It is a risk to our community,” said AmandaLynn Reese, chief programme officer at Harm Reduction Ohio, a non-profit that supports people who use drugs. “There’s been several instances of nitazenes being reported within the community, and I think we’re going to see more of that, especially as we’re seeing less fentanyl.”
To learn more about what was happening in Ohio, Bellingcat filed a public records request for county-level figures to the state’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI). The data shows that the counties of Scioto, Butler and Cuyahoga — areas long affected by the opioid crisis — account for almost half of all nitazene detections across the state, by weight.
In the 2000s, Portsmouth in Scioto County became known as the “pill mill capital” of America due to widespread overprescribing of opioids. More recent data continue to show Scioto with one of the highest rates of drug overdose deaths in the state. In Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, drug-related mortality rates tripled the national average in 2022.
Two years ago, Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine issued executive orders to schedule nine different nitazenes and legalised the use of tools to test for drugs including nitazenes.
The reasons why Ohio has been so hard hit are still not fully understood. “Ohio’s geography has long been a suspected contributing factor,” said Erin Reed, director of RecoveryOhio, a statewide initiative coordinating Ohio’s response to addiction. The organisation cited a 2001 article pointing to Ohio’s unique geographic and infrastructural features — including vast land, air and sea transportation networks — as key reasons for the state being a hub for drug trafficking.
Local organisations like Harm Reduction Ohio are pushing for more drug-checking services, education, and greater accessibility to testing strips and life-saving medications like Naloxone, a drug that is used to reverse an opioid overdose. “People are going to use drugs,” Reese said. “We don’t know the supply, but those are ways you can engage in your drug use to increase safety and reduce harm.”
Dealer’s Choice
Bellingcat obtained medical examiner reports from Cuyahoga County for all nitazene-related deaths in 2023 and 2024, which provide an insight into how the drugs are being consumed. The autopsy records show that 45 people — 31 men and 14 women aged 29 to 72 — died after taking nitazenes over the two-year period. Among them were university graduates and former athletes, an Army veteran, an ironworker and an addiction counselor.
Just before Christmas in 2024, a young man from Cleveland died after taking drugs that included etonitazene. A couple of weeks earlier, the body of an elderly woman was found in her home after she ingested drugs that included metonitazene and protonitazene. In the summer, a mother of two children in her thirties consumed a similar lethal mix. All except one of the 45 deaths was ruled accidental.
And in every instance, nitazenes were detected alongside fentanyl, and often with a cocktail of other drugs such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and benzodiazepines. The reason for this wide variety, Tarentino, the DEA agent said, is that dealers often mix nitazenes into other drugs to make them more powerful and addictive, and ultimately to give them a competitive edge.
“It becomes a brand,” he said. “The unfortunate circumstance that we find ourselves in is that the dealer’s choice becomes a deadly decision.” Not only are these mixtures deadly — they can also be highly profitable.
“We used to see organisations that were predominantly selling and transporting cocaine or just heroin or just methamphetamine,” Tarentino said. “Now, we’re seeing organisations move coke, heroin, meth, fentanyl, pills, powder – everything. So we see these poly-drug organisations, and then we see these poly-drug mixtures.” Source: DEA
Court records analysed by Bellingcat show nitazenes have been sold at prices ranging from roughly US $4,000 to $12,000 per kilogram. But Tarentino said the DEA’s internal estimate puts $12,000 at the lower end of the range, with prices going up to as much as $40,000. Given their potency, even small quantities can be diluted into hundreds of thousands — or potentially millions — of doses once mixed and pressed into pills. “A little bit can go a long way,” Tarentino said, “and they can make a lot of money.”
A Freedom of Information Act request to the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) revealed that in 2024 and 2025 — the only years for which the agency has monitored nitazenes separately — 41 consignments of the drug were intercepted. The data shows that most of these shipments arrived by mail, primarily from mainland China, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. The quantities tended to be small, ranging from less than 1 gram to almost 700 grams.
The UK has also recorded anincrease in high-strength nitazenes in recent years. John Fahey, a spokesman for the National Crime Agency, said criminals used the UK as a “transit point” for shipping illicit drugs and that officials were working closely with US law enforcement on nitazene-related cases. Source: DEA
But that’s not always the case. An analysis of US federal court records linked to prosecutions of nitazenes indicates that roughly 90 kilograms of material containing nitazenes in different forms (powder and pills) have been seized over the past three years. Nearly two-thirds of that amount, about 60 kilograms, stem from a single case.
In that case, prosecutors allege that a man named Valkar Singh drove a blue Maserati from Canada into the US carrying six industrial-sized buckets with more than 100,000 pills containing isotonitazene. According to court filings, Singh transported the drugs to a Bronx, New York address, where he was arrested by undercover law enforcement officers.
Tarentino, who is familiar with the Singh case but could not comment on it specifically, said a lot of work is being done to prevent drugs being smuggled across the Canadian border. “Canada has become a major concern, but also a major partner in trying to stop the synthetic opioids that are coming into the United States,” he said.
Lawyers for Singh, who has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing, declined to comment.
Photos of buckets containing isotonitazenes in the trunk of Singh’s car. Pills only contain trace levels of active ingredients, meaning the exact quantity of nitazenes is unknown. Still, experts say this seizure was significant, considering the drug’s potency. Source: US District Court for the Southern District of New York
The scale of the alleged seizure makes this case an outlier. Of 46 federal cases identified by Bellingcat between 2021 and 2025, the next highest nitazenes seizure was about 9 kilograms. By comparison, data provided by the European Union Drugs Agency shows roughly 18 kilograms of nitazene-related seizures (pills, powder, liquid) across the EU between 2019 and 2023.
“It’s very large,” said Jared Brown, scientific affairs officer at the UNODC. “One hundred thousand pills is probably at the limit of what we hear about in terms of maximum types of quantities that get seized.”
The evidence suggests that most buyers are individual dealers who purchase relatively small quantities online, rather than organised criminal groups. “It’s street-level or mid-level dealers [in the US] that are introducing the nitazenes into the drug supply, not the big drug traffickers,” said Philip Berry, a visiting senior lecturer at King’s College London who formerly worked in counter-narcotics at the UK Home Office.
Court documents show that buyers can easily find nitazene suppliers online: on dark web marketplaces, standalone chemical supplier websites, or even on social media platforms. The suppliers often market the drugs by listing their chemical identifier and social media contact details. Often, the ads include an image of a young Asian woman striking a pose.
Buyers are often individual dealers who contact sales representatives via encrypted channels and negotiate a deal. In those conversations, representatives will sometimes disclose how they claim to evade customs, for example by declaring the product as cosmetics or electronic accessories.
Ads for nitazenes — such as these ones Bellingcat viewed this month — are found on dozens of sites, from social media platforms to prominent Asian-headquartered marketplaces that target international buyers. Source: Bellingcat
A detailed account that illustrates this modus operandi comes from the 2023 case against a man named Will Catis in Florida — the state with the second highest number of confirmed nitazene reports. Court documents show that a basic internet search led Catis to multiple nitazene advertisements listed by Jiangsu Bangdeya New Material Technology Co., LTD, a Chinese company sanctioned by the US Treasury for offering illicit substances for sale, including fentanyl and protonitazene.
Catis purchased approximately four kilograms of nitazenes from Jiangsu Bangdeya in batches no larger than 500 grams. The drugs were sent via the US Postal Service to Deerfield Beach, Florida. Once received, Catis mixed the nitazenes with other drugs, pressed the substance into a brick and sold it to other drug traffickers. Catis was jailed for 12 years after pleading guilty to possessing and intending to distribute nitazenes.
One court case from Florida describes how a couple who lived in a converted garage bedroom in Hernando County bought nitazenes through the mail from Chinese companies they contacted online. Jacob Spinoza and his girlfriend Veronica Jo Barback regularly abused the drugs and distributed them locally, according to court documents. Both pleaded guilty. Spinoza was sentenced to nine years in prison, and Barback received a three-year sentence.
Jacob Spinoza and Veronica Jo Barback under the influence of nitazenes. Court records said Spinoza survived more than 20 overdoses in 2022. Source: US District Court Middle District of Florida
Another notable case reveals how a man allegedly ran a drug trafficking operation from a prison in Ohio. Investigators said Brian Lumbus Jr worked with a middleman, Giancarlo Miserotti, who contacted drug manufacturers in China to get nitazenes shipped through Italy to avoid custom checks. Once in Ohio, the plan was to distribute the drugs to other states, court documents said.
But law enforcement agents were listening in on conversations between Lumbus and other members of the drug network, who expressed caution about the potency of nitazenes. “Man, we got to be careful … somebody died,” Lumbus said in one phone conversation, according to court documents. “Ohhh … it was too strong,” Miserotti responded. “I think the ratio of the pink [metonitazene] was thick.”
Lumbus is awaiting trial. Miserotti was arrested in Italy in 2023 and sentenced to more than 13 years in prison.
Arms Race
Enforcement actions have targeted the online marketplace ecosystem. In June 2025, Archetyp Market, a major dark web platform used to sell drugs, was dismantled in a coordinated operation involving Europol. US authorities have also indicted several China-based companies and individuals accused of offering nitazenes and related synthetic opioids for sale. Still, advertisements for nitazenes continue to litter online markets, constantly adapting to new regulatory regimes.
Nitazenes, such as this listing for etonitazene, which is up to 500 times stronger than heroin, are openly advertised online. Source: Bellingcat
In July 2025, China placed the majority of nitazenes under national control. Tightened regulations — both in China and the US — have tried to stem the flow of nitazenes. But drug experts warn that manufacturers are already exploiting loopholes in China’s regulations by marketing chemically similar synthetic opioids known as “orphines.”
Jared Brown, of UNODC, said orphines are also thought to come from China and are about as powerful as fentanyl. “Orphines have just enough of the molecule difference that it isn’t covered by the core definition that China has made,” he said.
This is not the first time Chinese synthetic opioid manufacturers have adapted to regulations. In 2019, China banned all fentanyl-related substances, including some major precursors. The number of distinct fentanyl analogues reported to the UNODC subsequently plummeted, while reports of nitazenes quickly picked up. Now that China is clamping down on nitazenes, orphines are on the rise. More than 150 cases involving orphines were reported in the US between 2024 and 2025, the majority of which are in Illinois.
“Always adapting, always changing – we call them ‘shape shifters’,” said Tarentino. “They’re this global Hydra that are always changing, evolving and adapting to their environment and taking full advantage of all of these different loopholes and vulnerabilities that exist.”
Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
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As he stepped off the flight to Istanbul on August 21, 2025, the forty-something bearded man in a brown T-shirt blended in easily with his fellow travelers. “Landed,” he texted his wife, who responded with a heart emoji.
A few hours later, the man arrived to the seaside resort of Trabzon, on Turkey’s northeastern Black Sea coast, and headed for the city’s marina.
It was there that the last known image of Anatol Kotau was captured at 6:35 p.m. as he passed through the port’s border control. In the photograph, Kotau looks up at the camera, a blank expression on his face.
Kotau was no ordinary tourist. He is a Belarusian official-turned-dissident who had fled his country’s autocratic regime and taken refuge in neighboring Poland. He was actively wanted in Belarus, Russia, and several other former Soviet allies for what Belarusian authorities deemed to be “anti-state” activity.
He never returned home from the trip to Turkey. His whereabouts — and whether he is still alive — have been a mystery ever since.
But a joint investigation by the Belarusian Investigative Center (BIC), Deutsche Welle, and OCCRP has now uncovered new details about the dissident’s disappearance.
Reporters drew on police documents, corporate records, surveillance footage, passenger manifests, border records, satellite imagery, social media posts, and interviews to reconstruct Kotau’s final hours aboard a pleasure yacht in the Black Sea.
The investigation reveals that the yacht carrying Kotau and three other passengers was likely intercepted off the coast of Abkhazia, the Moscow-backed breakaway Georgian region that is home to a large Russian military presence.
Sources familiar with the incident told reporters Kotau was taken from the yacht onto a patrol boat. While OCCRP could not independently confirm what happened at sea, satellite imagery obtained by reporters shows what appears to be a Russian coast guard boat leaving a base in the vicinity used by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) shortly before the sources said the interception took place.
Russia’s coast guard is part of the FSB, the country’s powerful domestic spying agency.
The passenger manifest reveals the identities of those who sailed on the yacht alongside Kotau that day. They include two Russian men — one of them a local city functionary in the ruling United Russia party — who subsequently disembarked in Abkhazia instead of returning to Turkey with others aboard the boat.
Records also show that just before Kotau boarded the vessel in Trabzon, another Belarusian man stepped off it. The man was previously employed by a company owned by a member of Belarus’ State Security Committee, the national intelligence agency that goes by the acronym of its Soviet-era predecessor, KGB.
That ex-KGB member also has a personal history with Kotau, reporters found. He was described as a “friend” on the guest list of Kotau’s planned wedding celebration in 2020, and the pair had been photographed together in Belarus on multiple occasions, emails and social media posts show.
Many questions about the events of the day remain unanswered, including whether Kotau was aware that these other passengers would be sailing on the yacht, what he knew about them, and why he was in their company.
While OCCRP could not confirm what if any role these individuals might have had in his disappearance, the findings raise questions of whether their backgrounds were more than coincidence.
After Kotau vanished, Belarusian officials said he was not in their custody, while Russia’s FSB has also denied knowledge of his whereabouts.
The Belarusian government, the Russian FSB, and the other passengers identified by reporters did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Rising Official To Regime Opponent
Kotau, now 47, rose steadily within the Belarusian government after graduating from a prestigious university in Moscow for diplomats that is heavily attended by students from former Soviet countries.
He began his career at the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, before moving to the embassy in Warsaw and then taking a role with the presidential administration back in Minsk. In 2015, he was appointed Secretary General of the National Olympic Committee, headed by President Aleksander Lukashenko himself.
But then Kotau’s trajectory shifted. After a short stint in the private sector, he worked at the presidential administration’s Property Management Directorate headed by Viktor Sheiman, a close Lukashenko ally sanctioned by the EU and U.S. over his alleged role in disappearances of political opponents in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Less than two weeks after Lukashenko’s disputed victory in an August 2020 presidential election, which was followed by a violent government crackdown on protesters, Kotau submitted his resignation to Sheiman. In a media interview shortly after he said: “I’m not prepared to work for a team that denies or minimizes the unfortunately deplorable events that took place after the elections — all those murders and torture.”
“Even a single victim [is] unacceptable in the 21st century for a country that calls itself European,” he said.
Like many other dissidents, Kotau decamped to Poland and received refugee status there. From there, he continued to voice criticism of the regime, including over its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Most notably, Kotau ran a Telegram channel that published insider information from government agencies and details of Lukashenko’s personal life and movements.
In 2024, a Belarusian court convicted him in absentia on charges including “extremism” and “conspiracy” against the government, sentencing him to 12 years in prison. He was also added to Russia’s interstate wanted list.
“Without a doubt, [Kotau] was a person the Belarusian authorities wanted to get back, legally or illegally,” Ales Michalevic, a Belarusian lawyer and a former presidential candidate, told BIC.
“People like me, for example, are simply enemies for the regime, whereas people like him are traitors. And that is much more serious for the regime,” he added.
Yet, despite his status as a wanted man, Kotau’s friends said he often hinted that he maintained contacts with high-level officials within the Belarusian government, and that he could be secretive about his travel plans. Shortly before the trip to Turkey, Kotau told multiple people in the exile community that they would soon be able to return home.
Ruslan Khazin, one of Kotau’s friends, told BIC that he “just didn’t understand” why he would say this. When he asked him outright, Kotau, who had this “unusual manner,” just smiled and said, “’Well, you’ll find out later.’”
The Other Passengers
On the morning of August 21, 2025, a 30-meter pleasure yacht with four bedrooms and an on-deck jacuzzi sailed into Trabzon’s marina under a British flag. According to a passenger manifest, the boat, named the Shells, was carrying crew members and three passengers.
This was the yacht Kotau would board later that day, though those close to him said they had no information about the reasons for his trip. Who organized the yacht outing — and ultimately orchestrated his removal from the boat — remains unknown.
However, reporters searched leaked employment and border data to identify the backgrounds of other passengers on the ship that day, and found that two had previously been employed by a Russian politician and former Belarusian state security employees, respectively.
One of these passengers, a Belarusian man named Yury Puzikau, disembarked from the boat in Trabzon shortly before Kotau boarded.
According to leaked employment records obtained by BIC, Puzikau previously worked for three private entities founded or operated by ex-members of the Belarusian KGB.
The records do not indicate that Puzikau himself was an intelligence officer or that his travel to Turkey was connected to state security. The leaked data only shows he received a salary from these firms, without any information about his role.
However, one of his previous employers in Belarus, BTS Global, has contracts with the Belarusian government, and produced drones showcased at Belarus’s 2025 military live-fire war drills with Russia. (The company did not respond to requests to comment.)
Yury Serykh, the former Belarusian KGB member who founded BTS Global — and either owned or founded Puzikau’s other former employers — also has a history with Kotau himself.
The pair can be seen together in multiple photographs posted on social media in 2019 by the sports club Vozrozhdenie (“Revival”), where Serykh served as an executive, and where Puzikau was also previously employed.
Emails provided to BIC by a source show that Serykh had been invited to a planned wedding celebration for Kotau and his wife before they fled Belarus in 2020, and was described on the guest list as a “friend.”
The emails also include records of Kotau soliciting a donation from Serykh the previous year for a sports organization.
The men appear to have overlapped professionally as well. Both Serykh and his wife worked for the Belarusian National Olympic Committee when Kotau headed the organization as Secretary General in 2015, according to leaked employment records and archived versions of the committee’s official website.
Neither Puzikau nor Serykh responded to requests to comment about their relationship with Kotau or the events on the yacht that day.
After Puzikau disembarked, two Russian passengers remained on board alongside the crew for the trip that Kotau would eventually join. Those passengers, Pyotr Grib and Yury Golovanov, had traveled together from Moscow to Istanbul two weeks earlier, according to leaked border records.
Grib previously served as an assistant for several years to a Belarus-born municipal lawmaker from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party in the southern resort city of Sochi.
The Sochi legislature has highlighted Grib’s work distributing supplies to local men fighting in Russia’s war on Ukraine, and an official publication in February identified him as the head of the city’s local council on urban improvements.
The other Russian passenger, Golovanov, maintains a sparse public profile, but leaked employment records show he previously worked as head of human resources for a firm that managed transport logistics for government and corporate events in St. Petersburg.
The exact nature of the relationship between Kotau and these other passengers remains unclear. Grib and Golovanov didn’t respond to requests for comment regarding their travel to Trabzon or their relationship to Kotau.
Interception at sea
Passenger manifests and port cameras indicate that Kotau boarded the Shells around the same time as the yacht’s final other passenger, a Dubai-based Azerbaijani woman with a Jordanian passport named Qahira Eynalova.
Although Kotau had regularly traveled to Dubai for business, according to his wife and friend, reporters found no information about how he met Eynalova. Text messages provided to BIC by a source show that Kotau and Eynalova, 49, had known each other for at least two years, and discussed both business and personal matters.
Eynalova did not respond to questions about Kotau or the events on the yacht.
With the four guests on board – Kotau, Eynalova, Grib, and Golovanov – the yacht sailed out on to the Black Sea. The boat manifest stated its destination was the Russian port city of Sochi. It is unclear whether Kotau was aware of this. Russia has repeatedly handed over Belarusian dissidents to face charges back home, and Kotau had a warrant for his arrest in Russia.
The Shells never made it to Sochi, according to port and border crossing records.
Instead, it began moving toward the Georgian city of Sukhumi in the Russian-backed breakaway region of Abkhazia, home to a massive Russian military presence, according to sources with knowledge of the boat’s route that day.
Sources familiar with the events allege that another boat intercepted the yacht off the coast of Sukhumi. Men from the boat then boarded the Shells and removed Kotau, taking him onto their vessel, the sources said.
While this information could not be independently confirmed, satellite images reviewed by reporters show a vessel that matches the size and shape of a Russian coast guard patrol boat leaving a base used by the FSB at the nearby port town of Ochamchire, and turning toward Sukhumi around the time the intercepting boat was said to have approached the yacht.
Border records show the two Russian passengers, Grib and Golovanov, disembarked soon after, and officially entered Abkhazia at 2:42 and 2:46 p.m., respectively.
Abkhazia’s self-declared authorities did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the Georgian government.
When the yacht returned to Trabzon on August 23, two days after it left the marina, Eynalova was the only passenger on board.
‘They Needed Him Alive’
More than nine months after Kotau disappeared, his friends and family have no idea where he is.
Complicating the search is the place of his disappearance. Georgian conflict analyst Mamuka Komakhia told OCCRP’s partner Deutsche Welle that Abkhazia “is a well-known [legal] gray zone.”
“There’s a lack of control [there] from an international point of view,” he added. “Abkhazia is a favorable place to do any illegal activity.”
Though Kotau was under the protection of the Polish government as a refugee, authorities in Warsaw have not opened an investigation into his case. Spokesperson for the National Prosecutor’s Office Przemysław Nowak told Deutsche Welle that if a crime was committed in Poland, the prosecutor’s office would have jurisdiction.
Turkish authorities have similarly closed the matter. In their initial investigation report into Kotau’s disappearance, officials noted that Kotau had left the country at the time the missing persons report was filed and therefore would not investigate.
However, some legal experts challenge these approaches.
Michalevic, the Belarusian lawyer, believes Poland does have grounds to investigate the case, arguing that he was targeted in an operation that began while he was on Polish territory.
He told BIC that with “political will, initiating a criminal case on the disappearance of Anatol Kotau would be quite easy.”
Polish prosecutors did not respond to a request for comment on Michalevic’s opinion.
Kotau’s friend Ruslan Khazin believes the father of two is still alive.
“If they wanted to eliminate him, it would have been much easier to do it here, in Warsaw, and stage an accident,” he said.
It appears, he added, that “they needed him alive.”
On one of the first proper spring days in New York City, I found myself wandering through Broad Channel, a quiet, strikingly conservative neighborhood in Queens, to watch Park Rangers drill bits of plastic into the sides of mating Horseshoe Crabs.
