Six Southern Californians have been arrested for being involved in one of the largest drug rings on the now-shuttered Silk Road and AlphaBay . Prosecutors accuse them of selling more than $7 million dollars' worth of narcotics on the two notorious underground websites.

According to a newly issued criminal complaint, which was filed in federal court in Fresno, California, last Thursday, five men and one woman were connected to the AlphaBay account operating under the name "HumboldtFarms." Previously, one of the alleged male conspirators had apparently operated under the "PureFireMeds" account on Silk Road before that site was seized and closed down by law enforcement in October 2013.

On AlphaBay, which was taken down by federal investigators in July 2017, HumboldtFarms became "one of the largest vendors," authorities said in a statement.

The two primary suspects, William Farber and Bryan Lemons, both of Los Angeles, are charged with conspiracy to possess and distribute a controlled substance and conspiracy to launder money. Federal authorities believe that they used legitimate marijuana businesses as a way to launder millions of dollars in cash obtained through Bitcoin-fueled drug sales online.

Farber first drew the ire of Matthew Larsen years ago, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations who has been involved in other Dark Web-related cases.

In his affidavit, Larsen explained that he first began investigating Farber when Farber apparently was cashing out his bitcoins via an "unlicensed bitcoin exchanger" in Bakersfield, California—roughly 100 miles north. By using some of the data on the seized Silk Road server, Larsen said he was also able to determine that Farber was, in fact, PureFireMeds, which meant he had sold marijuana, cocaine, LSD, and other drugs.

The court filing also details other allegedly incriminating evidence against Farber, including a January 2016 border search of his cellphone as he was re-entering the United States on a cruise ship from Jamaica. Among numerous photos of drugs, there was also a long, angry text message from June 2014 that included the line: "Rule 101 in drug dealing... don't be so fucking mean to people."

Law enforcement didn't begin to connect the PureFireMeds account on Silk Road to HumboldtFarms on AlphaBay until later in 2016. Spurred by a discussion on Reddit, agents ordered items from HumboldtFarms, and, in early 2017, they scrutinized the postage and video surveillance footage to finally determine that someone was shipping large quantities of similarly sized packages from a particular post office in Glendale, California. Not only that, each package had unique stamps on it that were easy to recognize.

After conducting physical surveillance on the person dropping off those packages, authorities eventually identified Michael Palma and Richard Martinsen, who have been named as co-defendants alongside Farber and Lemons. After getting a warrant to open the packages, they found marijuana cartridges emblazoned with a company logo for "Dabble." As it turns out, Dabble is a company run by Lemons

The criminal complaint also details how Palma and Martinsen allegedly used the home of Michele Pickerell, yet another suspect, as a packaging and distribution center.

By April 2017, agents had put a GPS tracker on Farber’s car and had followed him to a warehouse in Northridge, California. Public records show that this was a California marijuana-related business. Quickly, the Los Angeles Police Department was brought on to the case. Investigators asked the local utility how much power the Northridge warehouse was drawing, suspecting it of being a grow operation. The warehouse turned out to be using nearly double the electricity of an average Costco.

To top it all off, numerous connections were found between most of the co-defendants on Facebook and Instagram.

Five of the six defendants, with the exception of Faysal Mustafa Alkhayat, appeared in court on August 17 and entered a plea of not guilty. They are set to appear in court again in October.