Participating agencies who make this effort possible include Fort Collins Police Services, Larimer County Sheriff’s Office, Loveland Police Department, Windsor Police Department, the Eighth Judicial District Attorney’s Office, and Colorado Adult Parole. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s Fayetteville Resident Agency also assisted during the investigation. Four Los Angeles County men were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of operating one of the dark web’s biggest drug distribution networks, according to the U.S. Joshua Vasquez pleaded guilty on April 24, 2024, and was sentenced on July 25, 2024, to 12 years in prison. Joseph Vasquez pleaded guilty on April 15, 2024, and was sentenced on Aug. 8, 2024, to 10 years in prison. Roman pleaded guilty on May 30, 2024, and was sentenced on Nov. 14, 2024, to 10 years in prison.
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The Silk Road grew into an empire churning through tens of millions of dollars. It became an international marketplace that included hacking services, foraged documents, and weapons — until it was brought down by the FBI in a dramatic sting operation at a San Francisco public library. “I’ve been writing about the drug world for 25 years, and what I was seeing in Russia was a genuinely new phenomenon,” says Max Daly, former Global Drugs Desk Editor at Vice. “It was a system that seemed to totally dominate all ends of the drug trade, from production and distribution to marketing, recruitment, enforcement and sales.”
Countries
Finally, the team compared this pattern with the conventional illegal drug market. And to see where it was coming from, they looked at government and law enforcement data on drug seizures. That gave them a good overview of the geographical marketplace for the illegal drug trade. The cat was out of the bag — online shopping was the future, and drugs were no exception. Other markets quickly adopted the system Ulbricht pioneered, starting a seemingly endless cycle of authorities busting sites, only to have more take their place. Monero is a privacy-centric crypto designed to mask transaction details, making it a preferred payment method for darknet drug dealers and cybercriminals.
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By offering so many options, these sites also just make it easier for psychonauts to explore what’s out there. Brian, a writer, harm reduction supporter and avid drug consumer in his 60s, hasn’t ever bought directly from the dark web. Before the United Kingdom, where he lives, banned “legal highs” in 2016, he would purchase spice, mephedrone, kratom, salvia and psychedelics from specialty websites. He began doing this after the law cracked down on brick-and-mortar headshops.
On Telegram drug buyers and sellers chat on invite-only “channels”, some of which can have tens of thousands of active members, where anything from mescaline and “pink cocaine” to mephedrone and steroids, is available to buy. As with the dark web, there is always the risk of being scammed, although the reliability of individual sellers and their drugs are rated, reviewed and discussed. “Waste your resources on seizing petty websites because they know the use of darknet services is ever growing,” another user wrote. The website launched in 2015 selling drugs, hacked materials, forged documents and illegal digital services such as Bitcoin-mixing – which cyber-criminals use to launder stolen or extorted digital coins. Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Martin Dittus and his pals at the University of Oxford in the U.K. They have mapped the darknet drug trade for the first time and compared it with known patterns of illegal trade.
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Srinivasan also used the encrypted messaging application Wickr to communicate with and sell drugs to customers. Srinivasan received virtual currency as payment for the drugs and then routed that virtual currency through cryptocurrency exchanges. Researchers found that in 2020, 15 percent of GDS participants who reported using drugs in the previous 12 months obtained them from darknet marketplaces—either by purchasing them first-hand or via someone else.
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The JoyInc marketplace was “one of the most prolific methamphetamine and cocaine distributors to ever operate on the darknet,” the Justice Department said in its statement. The website was a bastion of cyber-crime, surviving for more than six years selling drugs and illegal goods. The reviews also revealed the product involved, with the team interested only in cannabis, cocaine, and opiate products. The result is a look at where different types of drugs end up on the darknet. The FBI also arrested its founder, Ross Ulbricht, who was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The FBI seized assets including more than 144,000 Bitcoins worth about $29 million at that time, which it later sold at auction.
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This joint report prepared by the EMCDDA and Europol considers the latest findings from international research, fresh empirical data, and operational information and intelligence in order to illuminate how darknet markets function and how they relate to criminal behaviour. Anderson and his co-conspirators used darknet marketplaces to sell the drugs, prosecutors allege, shipping the stuffed animals from U.S. post offices. The darknet is a part of the internet that can be accessed only through special software. The investigation into Sean Shaughnessy was part of Operation Dark Gold, a year-long, coordinated national operation that used the first nationwide undercover action to target vendors of illicit goods on the darknet.
The NCB’s bust follows a four-month investigation during which authorities tracked Edison’s operations, which allegedly included over 600 drug consignments to cities like Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, and Himachal Pradesh. Edison allegedly sourced drugs from global suppliers, laundered proceeds via privacy coin Monero (XMR), and shipped narcotics to cities across India. The suspect had allegedly been operating as the country’s only ‘Level 4’ darknet vendor under the moniker “Ketamelon” for the past two years, according to reports in local media.
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State, local, and other federal agencies also contributed to Operation RapTor investigations through task force participation and regional partnerships, as well as the multi-agency Special Operations Division. “Operation RapTor shows that the dark web is not beyond the reach of law enforcement,” said Head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, Edvardas Šileris. “Through close cooperation and intelligence sharing, officers across three continents identified and arrested suspects, sending a clear message to those who think they can hide in the shadows.
- The United States saw 153 arrests as part of the international operation, followed by the United Kingdom, with 55, and Germany, with 52, according to the European Union law enforcement agency Europol, which coordinated it.
- These brutal attacks are often filmed and uploaded to social media – some Telegram groups have posted up to 2,000 clips – as victims are forced to beg for forgiveness.
- Joshua Vasquez pleaded guilty on April 24, 2024, and was sentenced on July 25, 2024, to 12 years in prison.
- Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) New York Field Office posed as a money launderer on darknet market sites, exchanging U.S. currency for virtual currency.
- Being able to order drugs for self-medication so easily and discreetly, Marie continued, also kept misguided friends from trying to force her to quit.
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In May, German police shut down Wall Street Market, a thriving marketplace that had more than 63,000 deals and 5,400 sellers, with over 1 million users worldwide. It was a resource-heavy operation, involving hundreds of separate investigations by five EU and US agencies. A few weeks before, Dream – the longest running and largest market – was closed under mysterious circumstances. SANTA ANA, California – An Orange County man and South Los Angeles man were sentenced today to federal prison for supplying fentanyl-laced pills to a drug trafficking ring that sold these drugs to more than 1,000 customers nationwide via the dark web. Vendors and users also coordinated their migration onto other platforms through encrypted messaging tools such as XMPP and Tox, both of which had also become fall-back communication channels following the takedown of illegal marketplace AlphaBay in 2017.
While the FBI and the U.S court system deemed Ulbricht a criminal, his supporters amongst crypto and Libertarian circles thought otherwise, minting him a hero instead. At the time, the ability to use Bitcoin to buy and sell items on Silk Road earned the robust respect of crypto-supportive crowds. Most vendors (890) were based in the US, with the UK in second place, followed by Germany with 225 sellers.
Market URLs change rapidly nowadays on the dark web, to escape malicious hacking by blackmailers. This exposes users to risk as it is simple to copy a site’s code, host a fake version of it, circulate URLs online and steal users’ passwords to the official sites – and then steal their bitcoins. Navia further admitted to supplying methamphetamine to Ta and Srinivasan’s drug trafficking operation. But one darknet drug dealer has told the BBC that law enforcement face an “impossible task” trying to close down such sites. The proliferation of dead drop sales is likely to have contributed to this trend. Over the past two years, dead drop dealing over Telegram has become a key method of distributing illicit drugs sold online in the ROK.
Domestically manufactured synthetics are cheaper than trafficked cocaine or heroin and are spiking in popularity in Russia. Suppliers are meeting demand by producing Udemy-like online courses that teach the surprisingly accessible manufacture of synthetic drugs. For a growing number of struggling young people in Russia, the money outweighs the risks, especially if they have a drug habit.
