A former Delaware doctor who aided her fiancée in selling drugs on a black market website was sentenced to 30 months behind bars on Tuesday.
Alexandra P. Gold was also sentenced by Judge Sue L. Robinson in U.S. District Court of Delaware to three years of supervision upon her release from federal prison.
Gold was arrested with her fiancée and fellow gynecologist Olivia Bolles in November 2013 near their Four Seasons neighborhood in Glasgow.
The couple, who completed four-year residency programs at Christiana Care, were accused of using their home as a base to conduct illegal drug sales on the website Silk Road. Federal agents in Florida tracked shipments of drugs bought on the site to Delaware.
Gold, who helped Bolles package drugs like Xanax, oxycodone and Adderrall in candy packages, pleaded guilty in June to maintaining premises for the purpose of unlawfully manufacturing and distributing a controlled substance and conspiracy to distribute drugs.
If I am not mistaken, Bolles got five years, and they both went to federal and not state prisons, correct?
I don't remember if Bolles plead out or went to trial. With the disparity of their sentences, it makes me wonder if Gold turned state witness against her. Overall, I can't imagine they would view the partners as having that different of roles. I also don't remember if they both wrote the scripts, or if only Bolles.
I hold the unpopular opinion that it's not necessarily bad to "save yourself" when you're in that kind of trouble, and I don't think cooperating is some evil, horrible decision to make. I don't subscribe to making things easier on the police, of course. But part of being in a criminal enterprise is remembering the "Enterprise" part, and that you really have to consider if your buyer/seller/partner would or wouldn't do the same.
Considering the size of their operation, and the laundry list of things they were charged with, I find 2.5 and 5 years to be relatively light sentences, considering US drug laws and their love for imprisoning traffickers. I am impatiently waiting for XK sentencing to see how the final charges and sentences compare with the MDPro case, once I do the math to correct for sheer volume. I need to spend some time on /u/gwern site and read more into both of them. I think it will be an interesting comparison.