The breadth of the darknet’s product offering, combined with the relatively low barrier to entry, creates gateways to novel drug-using behaviours, where people try new substances just because they’ve suddenly been made available to them. The darknet markets also act as hubs for the sharing of precursor chemicals, lab equipment and video tutorials that have created a vast network of amateur chemists churning out mephedrone nationwide. The site achieved notoriety through media reports and online chatter. But users could only access the site through Tor – a system that lets people use the web without revealing who they are or which country they are in. A Southern California duo face federal sentencing for selling tens of thousands of fentanyl-laced pills and cocaine on the dark web. Jerrell Eugene Anderson, who federal authorities allege ran a darknet methamphetamine and cocaine trafficking ring from Santa Clarita, was sentenced to 96 months in federal prison.
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For as many people who believe this is something of a utopian development, you can be sure many more view it as dystopian—especially if the dealers are in fact scammers or selling dodgy goods. But according to Meta, no more than 1 in 2,000 views on Facebook is of content that violates its restricted goods policy. Between July and September 2024, Meta says that 96 percent of drug sales content that violated its terms was removed before a user reported it. TikTok, meanwhile, removed 99.5 percent of content violating its policy on alcohol, tobacco, and drugs before it was reported, according to its Community Guidelines Enforcement Report for the second quarter of 2024.
Treasury International Capital (TIC) System
These chains link the supply with the demand across the entire planet. But the darknet has the potential to fundamentally change these routes, so there is great interest among researchers, law enforcement agencies, and policy makers about how the changes are happening. In particular, they are interested in whether the darknet is having a greater impact on the supply side or the demand side of this chain. More specifically, the new report suggests that following the takedown of the Hydra Marketplace by Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office in April 2022, at least 10 darknet markets have risen to fill the regional void for drugs and other illicit goods. Hernandez ran a dark web vendor site under the moniker “opiateconnect,” selling illicit scheduled drugs, including cocaine, and various counterfeit drugs.
International
An important question is whether darknet markets are slowly reorganizing the global drug trade. Dittus and his team say they find little evidence of this in producer countries. Instead, darknet markets primarily play the role of local retailers serving the “last mile” in a small number of rich countries. THE HAGUE — Authorities in the U.S. and Europe arrested nearly 300 people, confiscated more than $53 million and seized a dark-web marketplace as part of an international crackdown on drug trafficking that officials say was the largest operation of its kind.
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Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Iran-based Behrouz Parsarad (Parsarad), the sole administrator of Nemesis, an online darknet marketplace, which was subject of an international law enforcement operation and was taken down in 2024. Prior to its takedown by law enforcement, narcotics traffickers and cybercriminals openly traded in illegal drugs and services on Nemesis, which was designed with built-in money laundering features. Nemesis had over 30,000 active users and 1,000 vendors and facilitated the sale of nearly $30 million worth of drugs around the world between 2021 and 2024, including to the United States. Today’s sanctions designation is OFAC’s first action as a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)-led interagency Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement (JCODE) Team. Hydra commenced operations in 2015, swiftly establishing itself as a dominant force in the global darknet marketplace.
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“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.” Regarding profits, darknet vendors do not have to limit their trading to face-to-face interactions, and can instead sell drugs to a potentially worldwide customer base. The report highlights the growth of the shadow economy and new communication methods used by criminals, including proprietary Android-based mobile apps and the launch of an underground marketplace called Kraken. Individuals across the world can report suspicious criminal activity to the ICE Tip Line 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 866-DHS-2-ICE.
As workers move up the supply chain from kladman to shop owner, both risk and reward increase. “In the UK and America, it’s very easy to get hold of drugs at the moment; there is less jeopardy involved in buying drugs in public than in places like Russia, Georgia, or South Korea — so there is less need of such an anonymous system” — explains Daly. With a soft clunk, the magnet attaches the bag of Russia’s favorite drugs, mephedrone (4-MMC) and alpha-pvp (flakka), underneath the mailbox. The stashman unlocks his phone, takes a picture of the drop, and uploads the coordinates for the buyer. He exits the apartment complex and heads towards his next location — a hollow behind a brick where he will hide a bag of coke.
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- The breadth of the darknet’s product offering, combined with the relatively low barrier to entry, creates gateways to novel drug-using behaviours, where people try new substances just because they’ve suddenly been made available to them.
- Some chat groups trade tips on insurance fraud, credit card fraud or counterfeit money.
- On Tuesday, he said he had called Ulbricht’s mother to inform her that he had granted a pardon to her son.
- Okparaeke is said to have bought from suppliers overseas in large quantities and shipped them on to customers in the US via post offices in New York and New Jersey.
“Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the internet today,” FBI agent Christopher Tarbell said in a criminal complaint lodged by the agency in 2013. In any case, online dealers have long since arrived in popular culture. The second season of the Netflix series “How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast),” produced in Germany, started at the end of July.
But increasingly deals are being done online using the so-called dark net, at online marketplaces where cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are used for anonymous transactions. The average price for a wholesale pack of 1,000 ecstasy pills, of varying stamp and strength, dropped from £2,000 to £1,500, with some vendors offering to sell up to 10,000 or 20,000 pills at a time. On Dread, the reactions to the recent law enforcement activity were a mix of dismay and defiance. “Are there any trustworthy markets left?” one user wrote, complaining that they used the dark web markets as a source for anti-seizure drug Lyrica and now had no good source. “This is so fucked up man, we have the right to do whatever we want to our bodies.” Shortly after launching, the image-heavy darknet marketplace developed a reputation as a one-stop shop for everything including ecstasy, MDMA, speed, cocaine, crystal meth, LSD and marijuana.
Combating Transnational Crime
The Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section (MLARS) of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, coordinated with law enforcement and federal prosecutors from more than 50 U.S. Attorney’s Offices to investigate 65 targets identified by the undercover operation, which led to the arrest and impending prosecution of more than 30 darknet vendors. His buyers purchased the fentanyl and fentanyl analogues, which was shipped to their addresses, using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the indictment alleges. One user, who allegedly purchased a fentanyl analogue from Mr. Shaughnessy, overdosed on the substance and died. Mr. Shaughnessy allegedly transferred his Bitcoin proceeds to other cryptocurrency wallets in exchange for regular fiat currency, which was shipped to his home in Dallas. Unbeknownst to Mr. Shaughnessy, he sent more than $120,000 bitcoin to wallet addresses controlled by federal agents.
But the Darknet perpetrators are difficult to prosecute — especially since drug-dealing is often “victimless crime” that neither party has an interest in reporting. Studies have shown that Darknet drug dealers offer higher product qualities than street dealers. The investigators also noted a high degree of purity in the “Chemical Revolution” products.
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“Our drugs tend to be quite expensive in the international sense, so they’re not really competitive when we look at it compared to Europe or the United States.” Now based in Dubai, Telegram was started in 2013 by Russian brothers Pavel and Nicolai Durov and now has 700 million active monthly users. A kilo of speed has remained stable at around £1,000, while a kilo of MDMA crystal briefly rose from £5,000 up to £5,500, then came back down to £5,000.
