Under an emergency rule, it has been illegal to sell, possess, or distribute any isolated or concentrated 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH) in Florida since August 2025. 7‑OH concentrations below 1% in kratom remain legal, which keeps plain‑leaf kratom legal in Florida.
In September, multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Palm Bay Police Department, and the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, began an investigation into Overseas Organix, which at the time operated a warehouse out of Palm Bay, FL. The company sold 7-OH, highly concentrated mitragynine extracts, kratom, and kava.
On December 2, the Palm Bay warehouse was raided by authorities, who uncovered explosives, firearms, and 92,000 pounds of what some media outlets such as CBS Miami and News6 described as 7-OH. The owner, Maxwell Horvath, was arrested.
The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office seemed to sensationalize the story from the beginning. The office posted this on Facebook, shortly after the bust:
“Breaking News:
Major drug and explosive devices arrest of 26 year old Maxwell Horvath…this is breaking bad on steroids!!
Agents seized approximately 92,000 pounds of illegal substance suspected to contain a concentration of 7-OH* with a street value of around $4.7 million!!
Great job by our Agents, and of course a big thank you to our partners at the DEA, ATF and Palm Bay Police Department for all of their incredible work on making this case come together!!”
Sheriff Wayne Ivey, along with Palm Bay Police Chief Mario Augello, also created a video in which they posed in front of the seized deep‑orange, rusty‑colored powder while standing behind a table of confiscated firearms. In the video, Sheriff Ivey described the powder as “92,000 pounds of a extracted substance, substance is taken out of, um, kratom, the substance kratom, taken out of kratom, and it makes it what is called 7-OH which, recently, the Florida legislature did an emergency bill to make 7-OH illegal here in the state of Florida.”*
*The careful wording in both of these statements by the sheriff may be due to the seized substance actually being kratom, or heavily oxidized kratom, which may or may not have exceeded the legal 1% concentration of 7-OH.
News reports of “92,000 pounds of 7‑OH” were apparently confused by these statements, as such a quantity is scientifically impossible. The amount of mitragynine required to produce that amount of 7‑OH is astronomically unrealistic. Even under the most generous assumption—treating mitragynine and 7‑OH as having roughly equivalent molecular weights and assuming a perfect 1:1 mass conversion—you would need about the same mass of mitragynine as the alleged 92,000 pounds of 7‑OH. Converting that figure gives roughly 41,700 kilograms, or about 41.7 metric tons, of pure mitragynine. If you then translate that into the amount of kratom leaf required, using a high‑end estimate of 2% mitragynine content, you end up needing more than two million kilograms of leaf—over 2,000 metric tons. And that’s before accounting for real‑world extraction losses, purification losses, and the fact that mitragynine‑to‑7‑OH conversion is not a direct or high‑yield process in any legitimate scientific context. Once you factor in realistic yields, the required leaf mass balloons even further, reaching quantities that exceed what any single facility—or even most national‑scale supply chains—could plausibly handle.
In response, Overseas Organix posted this to its website:
“As some of you may be aware, On December 2nd, Our Florida location was raided by the DEA, which temporarily halted all our company’s movement. We sincerely apologize for any and all inconvenience this has caused you regarding placing orders for our product. However, we have continued normal business as of Wednesday, January 7th…This has been a very unpleasant period for everyone and we hope that you understand during our trials and tribulations. We 100% guarantee that we won’t be going anywhere…”
Horvath accepted a plea deal and pleaded guilty to a single charge: possession of a firearm by a felon. His felonies reportedly stem from 2017 charges of weapons and drug trafficking of MDMA, for which he served two years in federal prison.
Horvath’s company is still operating in South Carolina.