HARRISBURG – Attorney General Dave Sunday announced a Montgomery County man was sentenced to up to four years of incarceration for his role in the large-scale shipping of Bromazolam, a synthetic designer benzodiazepine, as Xanax.
Charles Dewayne Myers, 28, received the prison sentence during a Sept. 4 hearing, on cocaine possession and representing non-controlled substances as a controlled substance charges. He will also serve five years of probation for identity theft. Myers was immediately taken into custody following the hearing.
“These synthetic drugs are highly potent and unpredictable, but this defendant trafficked them because he believed it wasn’t a big deal,” Attorney General Sunday said. “I’m here to tell you it is a big deal. I have already asked the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to schedule drugs like this, because they have no legitimate purpose. This sentence sends a message that selling drugs like this and marketing them as legal drugs can land you in prison.”
Bromazolam is a synthetic triazolobenzodiazepine that has never been approved for medical use. It acts on the same receptors as prescription benzodiazepines, like Xanax, which produce sedative and anti-anxiety effects. It is often described as a “designer benzodiazepine” and sold online, without medical oversight.
Due to the unregulated nature of the drug, its sale is dangerous due to the potency of the drugs and is often combined with fentanyl and other more lethal drugs. Its sale has resulted in deaths around the country. Recently, Attorney General Sunday joined other Attorneys General in calling on the DEA to ban bromozalon.
Myers was arrested in September 2024, after an investigation by the Office of Attorney General Office Bureau of Narcotic Investigation and Drug Control, the Department of Homeland Security, the United States Postal Inspector Service and the Pennsylvania State Police. A package of 106 counterfeit Xanax pills were recovered from a package that had been returned to an address where the resident was not the original sender.
Investigators ultimately learned Myers had a pattern of mailing packages and soft envelopes of pills from drop boxes across Chester and Montgomery counties. At trial, Myers claimed he believed that there weren’t really any consequences for this type of scheme, because it was a “new thing.”
Myers is believed to have run this scheme from July to September 2024, selling and shipping tens of thousands of counterfeit pills in that time. At the time of his arrest, he also was in possession of cocaine, which resulted in the drug possession conviction.
Myers was convicted at trial in May 2025.
This case was prosecuted by Senior Deputy Attorney General Michael Barry of the Bureau of Narcotics Investigations.
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