In late 2017, the Salzburg National Police Directorate (LPD) raided the home of a suspected darknet drug dealer. The suspect is a 26-year-old from the Pongau district of Salzburg, Austria. Authorities accused him of buying drugs on the darknet to use and to resell. The investigation, they revealed, found that the suspected vendor had used the darknet to sell drugs ... Read More »
In Raleigh, North Carolina, 25-year-old Matthew Lee Yensan pleaded guilty to several different charges related to darknet alprazolam distribution. In 2017, the DEA received a tip that a Raleigh man had been producing ‘Xanax’ pills and selling them on the darknet. The DEA then raided Yensan’s house and a storage unit in his name. They found massive quantities of the ... Read More »
In early 2017, a Federal Grand Jury in South Carolina returned an indictment that accused Robert Bryan Mansfield, a 60-year-old Charleston man, of conspiracy possession with intent to distribute and conspiracy to distribute. According to court documents recently made public, authorities caught Mansfield during a Department of Homeland Security investigation into international drug trafficking. The arrest later involved officers from ... Read More »
The global drug market is estimated to account for approximately $321 billion per year. Conventionally, illicit drugs used to travel along complex and long supply chains. Nevertheless, the advent of novel darknet marketplaces has started to alter this landscape. Cryptomarkets, or darknet marketplaces, are pillared on anonymizing cryptography and virtual currencies, such as bitcoin, to facilitate illicit transactions between vendors ... Read More »
According to U.S. Attorney William E. Fitzpatrick, a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation led to the arrest and indictment of two California men for their role in a large-scale fentanyl trafficking ring. The operation resulted in the distribution of fentanyl and fentanyl analogs across the United States. The investigation began last year in August when the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) executed ... Read More »
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrested several suspected members of a darknet fentanyl distribution network. In mid December, the RCMP raided a drug lab in Chateauguay that had been pumping out fentanyl and carfentanil. Thirty police officers participated in the drug bust and arrested a total of at least eight suspects—some at the drug lab and others at various ... Read More »
On August 31, U.S. District Court Judge Malachy E. Mannion sentenced 36-year-old Franklin Tejeda to 87 months in prison for his part in an international pill trafficking organization. Tejeda, according to United States Attorney Bruce D. Brandler, imported hundreds of thousands of Schedule ll and Schedule IV pills between 2014 and 2016. The press release from the United States Attorney’s ... Read More »
A former district committee member and board spokesperson of the Green party in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg sold drugs on the darknet since 2013, German authorities announced on August 22. That very same day, a special police commando unit raided the 40-year-old’s apartment after a lengthy investigation into his criminal activities. In total, according to the Berlin Landeskriminalamt (LKA), “Boris J.,” the suspect, ... Read More »
The darknet vendor known for using the password “asshole209” to decrypt messages—David Ryan Burchard—recently pleaded guilty to drug distribution that dated as far back as the Silk Road era. He admitted his guilt regarding the conspiracy to distribute marijuana charge and the possession with intent to distribute charge. The charges, of course, pertained to Burchard’s darknet activities. He sold (mainly) ... Read More »
Crypto-marketplaces are marketplaces that are hosted on anonymous networks, such as the Tor network, or other Darknets, and are mainly focused on the sale of illegal substances and illicit drugs. These online marketplaces utilize various tools to ensure the anonymity of their users and confidentiality of the delivered products by mail. Throughout the past few years, illicit drug trafficking on ... Read More »
In February 2016, an alarming number of juveniles started checking into Slatina County Emergency Hospital after smoking unidentified “hallucinogenic substances.” Every day, the hospital saw more patients with general sickness and malaise—all usually minors or very young adults. Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism opened an investigation into suspected narcotics trafficking finally made arrests in between May and ... Read More »
For two and a half years, Daniel and Juliana B. used the darknet to distribute numerous types of drugs—1,205 orders totalling $337,940, according to the prosecution. The trial drew near an end as the evidence against the husband and wife stacked up in front of them. Daniel, the 30-year-old husband accepted and claimed every charge in an effort to shield ... Read More »
On May 31, a Federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment that charged five more individuals in what authorities called the nation’s largest fentanyl trafficking ring. The original indictment charged only one man with fentanyl distribution, later discovered to be an Alphabay vendor. The Utah-based “group” could press several thousand pills and sold, through the darknet, to “every corner of ... Read More »
According to Acting United States Attorney Tom Larson of the Western District of Missouri, the second defendant of a four person online steroid smuggling ring received a sentence in a federal court. The defendant, Aaron Vincent Schweidler, a 32-year-old from Smithfield, NC, ran a $2.25 million anabolic steroid “over the internet” conspiracy. U.S. Chief District Judge Greg Kays sentenced him ... Read More »
Since early 2016, European law enforcement agencies including the Spanish National Police and the Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d’information (ANSSI) have been targeting arms dealers and weapon distribution centers linked to darknet marketplaces. The ANSSI in particular noted that it has become more difficult to stop terrorist groups such as ISIS due to the presence of the ... Read More »
Deep Dot Web Surfacing The News From The DeepWeb
