just provide a name, a shipping address, what drug you wanted, the quantity you wanted, your credit card information, and a rea- son for ordering, and a few days later, your drugs would show up at your doorstep.

“You will hear a lot about Paul Le Roux, but he’s not on trial here,” Gural continued. “This trial is about these four defendants and their conduct, which was to create an international network of website operators, business managers, doctors, and pharmacies that agree to work together to sell massive quantities of prescrip- tion drugs to customers in the United States.”

Each of the defendants intended to offer a variation on an un- conventional defense. They would freely admit to most of the facts as Gural had laid them out. Oz, McConnell, Tumpati, and Karka- las had all clearly participated in RX Limited, in their various ca- pacities. But since they believed that what they were doing was legal, they weren’t culpable, even if it turned out that they’d been wrong. “As far as Moran Oz knew, the company and everything he did for the company was completely legal,” his attorney, Rob- ert Richman, said in his opening statement. In a different type of criminal trial—for murder, say, or robbery—such a defense would be impossible. Murder is murder, even if you somehow don’t know murder is illegal. But the charges brought against Oz and his fel- low defendants required what’s called mens rea, knowledge on the part of the accused that they are breaking the law.

Oz’s and McConnell’s attorneys both planned an additional gambit: They would use the duress defense that Hunter had briefly floated before he’d pleaded guilty. Oz and McConnell, the narra- tive went, had both done Le Roux’s bidding because they feared that if they defied him, he would kill them. Oz’s defense would hinge on the boat incident in Subic Bay. McConnell’s—constructed by the husband-and-wife defense team Marie and Ryan Pacyga— would center on the killing of his friend Dave Smith, and Le Roux’s subsequent statement: “I didn’t need Dave, you’re lucky I need you.”

To support their duress defenses, they would do what the pros-