That's a shame. These guys' lives are going to be seriously messed up by this, and from the drug list, it looks like they were selling fairly ethical stuff; according to the article, they sold "LSD, ecstasy, fentanyl, mescaline ketamine, DMT and high-end marijuana".
> it looks like they were selling fairly ethical stuff; according to the article, they sold "LSD, ecstasy, fentanyl, mescaline ketamine, DMT and high-end marijuana"
"Fentanyl is approximately 100 times more potent than morphine, with 100 micrograms of fentanyl approximately equivalent to 10 mg of morphine and 75 mg of pethidine (meperidine) in analgesic activity."[1]
The entrepreneur in me really feels for them. They're true entreppies. Risking literally everything. Sure we risk our life savings and sacrifice having a normal life but they risk losing all that AND the chance at being thrown in jail for the rest of their lives.
Every time you hear a new drug commercial on TV, pay close attention to its side effects: permanent lung damage, eye damage, brain damage, death, heart attack, stroke, birth defects, etc... Notice how a drug that damaging is perfectly legal. Then look at how weed and lsd are criminalized. Sadly, I guess we'll have to wait till the older congress retires little by little and gets replaced with new lawmakers.
Ecstasy is horribly nasty stuff. People rarely OD, but it can vary quickly do significant and permanent brain damage with heavy use. The real problem is when the symptoms show up they are basically permanent. Honestly, prolonged heroin use is significantly less harmful, the only good thing about ecstasy is the unpleasant side effects and fairly long high limit how much people take.
5,200 orders valued, in total, at $1M. Over a ~2 year period. That's it? Hardly seems like much of a story. Particularly since Tor is of limited use when your system depends on electronic payment systems.
With a conservative estimate of 3x markup on product (seems way high, especially if these guys were just middle men), $20 shipping (national, Fedex) and 0 hosting costs they're making 192-(64+20) = $108 per order.
$108 * 5200 = 561,600 / 2 / 8 = $35,000 per person per year, or $16 an hour if it was a full-time job.
Considering that anyone with the skills to set up an anonymized marketplace site should be able to find work that pays far more than $16/hr this seems like more an ideological exercise or hobby than a money-making cartel.
Whether or not you consider it to be worth spending probably $3m+ on investigating, trying and imprisoning these 8 people is another ideological question...
I believe they were using bitcoins to anonymize some transactions.
The hardest thing for a regular consumer I would think would be finding a drop point. Drugs and things sent through the mail would be fairly easy to track to a consumer who could then be charged for possession.
I'm curious how they attacked this network -- I'd assume the payment side is still the easiest, and they could look for some patterns and then set up physical surveillance at WU or other locations to catch cash transactions.
If these guys were using e-gold or some other alternative payment system, the Feds would raid the currency operator's offices as well and seize servers (as they have done in the past). Not so with PayPal and Western Union (I'm not disagreeing with the lack of such action).
When I saw the title, I immediately assumed it was Silk Road. That would have surprised me, as the operators have no part in the actual business, and all trades are conducted with bitcoins. If Silk Road went down, that would be news, as they really embrace strong crypto and opsec.
No, the project was called The Farmer's Market. While it operated on Tor, they accepted payments over PayPal which completely breaks the anonymity chain. Silk Road is still operational and uses other security mechanisms (in addition to a decentralized, digital anonymous currency) to further anonymize transactions, running all payments through a tumbler.
I never understand why people have such a fundamentally difficult time grasping the concept of plaintext and/or subpoenas. If someone knows enough to trade drugs on Tor, they definitely should be using strong encryption on anything and everything pertaining to it, including email.
Month after month handfuls of new stories come out about someone outed and/or owned by emails or other plaintext communication that was not encrypted or cryptographically signed. You'd think it'd sink through after a while.
You have no reasonable expectation of security for anything that is not fully encrypted with vetted, real-world strong encryption. While you may want something to stay under wraps, you're just leaving it there for the taking unless it is stored on permanent storage only in encrypted form.
It's dangerous to compete with state-protected real drug cartels.
In all seriousness... does anyone think the present-day prohibition racket isn't just as corrupt as what was going on in the 1920s? Drug Enforcement Agency... who do you think they're enforcing for?
It's almost impossible that it wouldn't be that corrupt. There is just too much freaking money involved, the stakes too high, for massive numbers of people to not be on the take.
[+] [-] pjscott|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] llambda|14 years ago|reply
"Fentanyl is approximately 100 times more potent than morphine, with 100 micrograms of fentanyl approximately equivalent to 10 mg of morphine and 75 mg of pethidine (meperidine) in analgesic activity."[1]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl
[+] [-] ChrisNorstrom|14 years ago|reply
Every time you hear a new drug commercial on TV, pay close attention to its side effects: permanent lung damage, eye damage, brain damage, death, heart attack, stroke, birth defects, etc... Notice how a drug that damaging is perfectly legal. Then look at how weed and lsd are criminalized. Sadly, I guess we'll have to wait till the older congress retires little by little and gets replaced with new lawmakers.
[+] [-] Retric|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cypherpunks01|14 years ago|reply
Cali DA press release: http://www.justice.gov/usao/cac/Pressroom/2012/045.html
Full indictment (66 pg. pdf): http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2012/04/WILLEM...
[+] [-] milesskorpen|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] garethsprice|14 years ago|reply
With a conservative estimate of 3x markup on product (seems way high, especially if these guys were just middle men), $20 shipping (national, Fedex) and 0 hosting costs they're making 192-(64+20) = $108 per order.
$108 * 5200 = 561,600 / 2 / 8 = $35,000 per person per year, or $16 an hour if it was a full-time job.
Considering that anyone with the skills to set up an anonymized marketplace site should be able to find work that pays far more than $16/hr this seems like more an ideological exercise or hobby than a money-making cartel.
Whether or not you consider it to be worth spending probably $3m+ on investigating, trying and imprisoning these 8 people is another ideological question...
[+] [-] BigTigger|14 years ago|reply
The hardest thing for a regular consumer I would think would be finding a drop point. Drugs and things sent through the mail would be fairly easy to track to a consumer who could then be charged for possession.
[+] [-] rdl|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TillE|14 years ago|reply
Uh. How did they expect to remain anonymous with a PayPal account?
[+] [-] aviv|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redthrowaway|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xal|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tibbon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taligent|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thinkdevcode|14 years ago|reply
Also, why the hell would they use PayPal?! At least SR uses bitcoins.
[+] [-] donniezazen|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshu|14 years ago|reply
Was this silk road? I've been meaning to scrape prices from there as a pet economics project.
[+] [-] jmtame|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waterhouse|14 years ago|reply
The new url has "net-" in it.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] duaneb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loverobots|14 years ago|reply
But yeah, between advertising, shipping, getting paid and moving money around it's hard to stay anon .
[+] [-] nowarninglabel|14 years ago|reply
Amazing they would choose to communicate over it.
[+] [-] cookiecaper|14 years ago|reply
Month after month handfuls of new stories come out about someone outed and/or owned by emails or other plaintext communication that was not encrypted or cryptographically signed. You'd think it'd sink through after a while.
You have no reasonable expectation of security for anything that is not fully encrypted with vetted, real-world strong encryption. While you may want something to stay under wraps, you're just leaving it there for the taking unless it is stored on permanent storage only in encrypted form.
[+] [-] drivebyacct2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] api|14 years ago|reply
In all seriousness... does anyone think the present-day prohibition racket isn't just as corrupt as what was going on in the 1920s? Drug Enforcement Agency... who do you think they're enforcing for?
It's almost impossible that it wouldn't be that corrupt. There is just too much freaking money involved, the stakes too high, for massive numbers of people to not be on the take.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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