Navia pleaded guilty on April 29 to one count of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances. Ruiz pleaded guilty on June 3 to one count of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and one count of distribution of fentanyl. It was in this vacuum that Archetyp emerged, eventually becoming a key landing zone for vendors displaced by earlier market collapses. One of its defining features was its structured support for identity continuity. Archetyp encouraged vendors to re-establish their reputations through Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)-signed migration messages – cryptographically signed proofs that linked new accounts to profiles from previous marketplaces.
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The messaging app has also become a key node of the drug trade in Russia, where it is used by narco bloggers who discuss different drugs and where to buy them, and increasingly in other countries such as Argentina. 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. “Also, we know that drugs sold on the dark net tend to be better quality and less adulterated than drugs that are traded on the street as well.” Shipping drugs internationally from Australia doesn’t carry as much risk as you would think, Dr Martin says. “So I think the very large portions that we see of the darknet methamphetamine trade concentrated in Australia really reflects the relative lack of popularity of that drug in Europe and places like that.”
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- On 16 June, any lingering doubt was quickly dispelled when Archetyp’s homepage displayed European law enforcement’s seizure banner – the most recognizable farewell message in the dark web – declaring that the page had been taken offline as part of a law enforcement operation.
- He began doing this after the law cracked down on brick-and-mortar headshops.
- Dealers ran hundreds of paid advertisements on Meta platforms in 2024 to sell illegal opioids and what appeared to be cocaine and ecstasy pills, according to a report this year by the Tech Transparency Project, and federal prosecutors are investigating Meta over the issue.
- Vendors specialize in methamphetamine, cannabis, ecstasy, MDMA, LSD, ketamine, and THC products, and use a range of channels to advertise their stores.
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. The charges in the indictment are merely allegations, and the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. In a Vice documentary on drug sales on social media, it took the host just five minutes to connect with a dealer in London. ” As part of a separate research project, a 15-year-old was able to locate an account selling Xanax tablets in mere seconds on Instagram.
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A Southern California duo face federal sentencing for selling tens of thousands of fentanyl-laced pills and cocaine on the dark web. Operation RapTor involves law enforcement actions taken by JCODE member agencies, including the DEA, FBI, FDA OCI, HSI, IRS-CI, and USPIS. 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.
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The biggest takedowns in terms of volume – Silk Road, AlphaBay and Wall Street – have been police-led, but in 2018, the EMCDDA published a study which found that, of the more than 100 markets, just 10 percent closed as a consequence of overt police action. Police also took out a vital part of the dark web’s infrastructure, the information and review site Deepdotweb.com, arresting two suspected administrators in May in France and Israel, and seizing €7.5 million (£6.7 million) in bitcoins. The CEO of a Latin music conglomerate was sentenced today to 48 months in federal prison for conspiring to violate the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act by conducting business with… The Northern Colorado Drug Task Force (NCDTF) also helped investigate this matter. NCDTF works to protect the community by identifying, investigating, and impacting drug-related crime in Larimer County. 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.
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Vendors migrated to unstable alternatives such as Incognito and Bohemia, but none of these managed to consolidate trust or operational continuity. On Dec. 16, 2024, Rui-Siang Lin pleaded guilty to charges brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York of narcotics conspiracy, money laundering, and conspiracy to sell adulterated and misbranded medication for owning and operating Incognito Market, one of the largest narcotics marketplaces on the internet. However, the widespread use of the Russian template internationally allows authorities to anticipate many of the features of dead drop activity and leverage the expertise of blockchain intelligence companies with experience tracking Russian-language DNMs. Increased social awareness of the dead drop phenomenon and close cooperation between law enforcement and their private sector partners can help counter this rising threat.
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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.
Ulbricht got a life sentence for a long list of crimes, and prosecutors alleged Ulbricht attempted to hire hitmen. As workers move up the supply chain from kladman to shop owner, both risk and reward increase. With a soft clunk, the magnet attaches the bag of Russia’s favorite drugs, mephedrone (4-MMC) and alpha-pvp (flakka), underneath the mailbox.
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In the UK, the “Breaking Bad” drugs forum launched its own dead drop initiative with a video advertisement. Borrowing marketing practices from Russian-speaking DNMs, graffiti with the “Breaking Bad” logo and URL has recently been sighted in Liverpool, as well as other British and EU cities. Breaking Bad’s online forum hosts videos relating to the production of drugs, and provides a platform for sales reps from known Chinese drug precursor manufacturers. In North America, Western Europe, and Australia, drugs bought on DNMs are generally mailed to customers. By contrast, Russian-language DNMs serving the post-Soviet states use dead drops as part of the zakladka or “stash” system — bringing together networks of couriers, wholesalers, drug producers, DNM management teams, and even customer service operatives.
Vendors with higher feedback ratings can get away with asking for “early finalization.” This system (along with the reviews and forums) incentivizes them to sell what they say they’re selling; ripping people off has consequences. Using data over the past year from over 1,300 different drug seller listings on the encrypted messaging app in the UK, the average price for a kilo of cocaine fell from £36,000 in April 2022 to just under £29,000 in April 2023. “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.” On the darknet, the ring advertised its illicit business with monikers such as “Drugpharmacist” and “rickandmortyshop,” in reference to the popular adult cartoon, according to prosecutors. A screenshot of the marketplace shared by the DOJ in the statement showed cocaine available for bulk purchase from JoyInc on Drughub, a dark web site.
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“Law enforcement has had to start from scratch in hunting them down. Because Russia is frozen out of international policing intelligence, it is hard for these borderless drug businesses to be identified and caught” — says Daly. “Russian (and Ukrainian) hackers, crypto, and online tech experts have always been ahead of the curve in this realm, and so it takes a huge effort from police to take down these kinds of shops and platforms” — says Daly. The platforms encourage the behavior by paying for advertisements on Telegram channels and even YouTube. The phenomenon has created a subculture of bloggers, YouTubers, and Telegram influencers who have turned dealing drugs into a lifestyle — creating content about their jobs online. Domestically manufactured synthetics are cheaper than trafficked cocaine or heroin and are spiking in popularity in Russia.
It’s essential to know the local laws regarding online activities, and be cautious when using these platforms to avoid any potential issues. “It may be that a person’s entire experience of using drugs has actually started through the darknet, and may indeed be confined to the darknet,” she explained. Some of us who use drugs are lucky enough to have physical access to a safe supply.
