Stanford alumna Natalie Marie Gonzalez ’15 was sentenced to over 50 months in prison last Friday for running an online drug delivery service. According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Gonzalez was convicted of “conspiracy to distribute a mixture and substance containing methamphetamine.”
Gonzalez received her bachelor’s degree in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. During her time as an undergraduate, she was part of the Global Urban Development Project, Chocolate Heads Movement Band and Students for a Sustainable Stanford, among other student groups, according to her LinkedIn.
After graduating, she attempted to create multiple sustainability-related startups that “either flopped or dissipated due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to the sentencing memorandum. According to the University, she also re-entered Stanford in 2024 for a master’s degree in civil and environmental engineering.
In 2023, she started The Shop, an illicit on-demand drug trafficking service on the messaging platform Signal. The business ran from April to September 2023 before an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) investigation found the group’s stash at their Menlo Park location.
Gonzalez and her co-defendants exchanged cryptocurrency for cash to limit digital records and used “crypto mixers,” services that combine multiple users’ cryptocurrencies together, to conceal the money’s origin.
Attorney Daniel Pastor noted the business’s sophistication, writing that it was marketed as “offering the convenience of Silicon Valley order-and-delivery apps”.
The sentencing memorandum stated that Gonzalez’s offense level was affected by her role as the leader of the ring, her clean record and her admission of wrongdoing.
Gonzalez’s Stanford education and relatively comfortable upbringing were noted during her sentencing.
“Instead of using her intelligence and her social connections to obtain lawful employment or to continue striving to succeed as an entrepreneur, she created a Silicon Valley drug delivery service to enrich herself,” Pastor said in the sentencing memorandum. This was part of Pastor’s rationale for recommending a more serious sentence for Gonzalez than that of her co-defendants.
Pastor also remarked that Gonzalez did not seem to have considered her business as harmful. In a text sent to the OCDETF’s undercover agent, Gonzalez told the agent to “make sure we are sharing responsibly rather than contributing to addict[ions] that are damaging people.”
However, given the prevalence of fentanyl-laced drugs and Gonzalez’s own description of The Shop’s customer base as consisting mostly of “students and young professionals,” Pastor considered Gonzalez’s assumption to be “naive.”
Gonzalez pleaded guilty. In a letter to the court, she wrote that “[her] whole delusion came crashing down.”
“What once felt justifiable now feels deeply misguided,” Gonzalez wrote.