Arrests around the world related to Silk Road….So far
Posted by: DeepDotWeb
October 25, 2013
An interesting forum post on the Silk Road 2.0 forums (being set up as we speak) counting the arrests that happened so far that are related to silk road – you can read the original post here:
https://silkroad5v7dywlc.onion/index.php?topic=1381.0
EDIT: We Were just informed that this information was originated from here http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road#safe and
NOT from the silk road 2.0 forums only, so it comes out we copied it from there – we APOLOGIZE for this mistake!! As this info was posted to us as a forum post on SR2.0 forums.
I edited the post a but so it will be easier to read :)
Sweden
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2 Swedish men (the seller “SweExpress”), were arrested 8 October 2013 for selling marijuana; two users on Reddit noted that SweExpress ceased mailing orders a week before the SR raid.
England
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There is an anonymous claim of a May 2013 UK controlled delivery & arrest. After the SR bust in October 2013, the Devon UK seller of accessories like marijuana seeds/MBB+ packaging/kratom (“PlutoPete”), reported he had been raided & questioned and likely charged with his personal drugs3 but not charged over his SR sales.
3 more in Manchester were arrested & charged; the police claimed to seize “million of dollar in Bitcoin” so they were likely the high-volume seller “JesusOfRave”, which had mailed from Manchester.
Germany
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4 people were arrested in Germany in July 2013, apparently by tracing another drug seller’s supplier and then back down to that SR seller-group & possibly payments via mail (German coverage: 1, 2, 3, 4).
Netherlands
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In September 2013, a group of 6 Dutchmen were arrested for MDMA sales on SR; the arrests stemmed from a car search turning up thousands of pills in 22 November 2012 and then a raid of their manufacturing location 5 April 2013 (one commenter speculates they were the missing MDMA seller “MedicalM”). On 9 October 2013, following a month of wiretapping & Blackberry observation, 2 Dutchmen (the seller “XTCExpress”) were arrested while making MDMA pills & charged.
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Australia
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An Australian student’s MDMA was intercepted by Customs but the article makes no mention of him being penalized. A later prosecution & conviction of a SR seller was to related to a Customs interception of his large imports from Netherlands/Germany according to the judge’s sentencing verdict, and 2 teens made the mistake of ordering so much that their parents turned them in. Another Australian seller was pulled over by police in April 2012 while driving to the post office to mail shipments, the drugs found, his house searched, and was sentenced to 5 years (discussion).
A 7 November 2012 Australian article claims 30 interceptions a month in an area, but mentions nothing specific about arrests.
A December 2012 article quotes Customs claiming a 40% increase in seizures, but then quotes a SR seller as claiming a doubling or quadrupling of Australian buyers (hence, implying the interception rate has halved or worse). Reportedly, a June 2013 Parcel Post sting seized 140 packages/$8m & “Six of those arrested were Silk Road members.”
As of July 2013, there was “at least one criminal prosecution in WA [Western Australia] that involves Silk Road”, and WA police estimate “47 active Australian-based sellers who use Silk Road”. An Australian investigation starting in January 2013 arrested two fake ID manufacturers in September 2013; coverage does not mention SR, but a Redditor plausibly identifies them as having been the fake ID seller “Ausid” who stopped selling on SR in March 2013.
Estimating total number of Australian users is difficult, but the Global Drug Survey reportedly found 184 SR purchasers in its sample of >6600 Australians suggesting a risk of arrest or publicity <5184 (and incidentally, remembering this is a biased sample and the South Australian recent illicit drug use rate is ~14.9%, it suggests a very loose upper bound of all Australian SR users of 23000000×0.149×1846600<95541).
New Zealand
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A New Zealand Customs officer who likely used SR was charged with possessing & “supplying” methamphetamine but this “was uncovered during police inquiries into another crime”, with the resolution unclear.
A young NZer’s MDMA was confiscated by Customs and his house visited, whereupon he admitted guilt to the officers and unsurprisingly was arrested & convicted. What seems to be a third NZer was sentenced to 18 months probation.
A NZer was arrested in April 2013 over multiple very large orders from an online site, which may or may not have been SR. That article estimates 52m items passing through Customs in 2012 with 1.4k intercepted as drugs; an earlier NZ article claimed 80 interceptions a month with 7 arrests January-July 2012 or 1 arrest a month (suggesting each interception has a risk of leading to an arrest of ~1/80; the risk per order then depends on how many of the 52m items were drug packages).
In September 2013, 3 NZers were convicted of importing MDMA & cocaine.
America
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Despite making up much of SR’s customer-base and being one of the largest drug markets in the world, American cases are rarer than one might expect.
The aforementioned Tessellated claimed “we have not even once had a report of anyone having any legal trouble or “love letters” from our product.
On several occasions customs has opened our package, not found the product and sent it intact to the buyer.” A GlobalPost article mentions 8 arrests “in connection with online drug trafficking, although none involved Silk Road.” A pseudonymous Redditor claims to have been arrested & charged over cocaine sometime in 2012, but not convicted.
In February 2013, there were two cases of Americans being busted in Florida and Louisiana by signing for MDMA in what is called a “controlled delivery”; the simultaneity, drug type, & amount immediately led to speculation that they were both ordering from the SR MDMA seller luckylucianno who was previously having issues with order interceptions, which was confirmed when one of the arrested men posted on the SR forums warning away others and relevant threads were deleted by forum moderators (although a moderator claimed the Louisiana bust was unrelated to SR or the Florida bust).
A teen in Indiana was arrested in 2013 after his mother informed on him. I also know of another case involving an American who was convicted after a controlled delivery of LSD mailed from the Netherlands; his package was likely detected.
SR forum posters have claimed that a DMT seller, cocaine seller, & 2 others have all been busted but apparently for their offline connections and activities (the poster claims the DMT seller had too many people visiting and his neighbors squealed). A Redditor claims a friend was arrested at his PO box, a second claims his cousin was convicted of ordering marijuana & MDMA without a controlled delivery, and there were several claims to have been arrested or convicted in an August 2013 Reddit discussion (these claims are not verifiable). On 12 April 2013, a South Carolinian man (the seller “Casey Jones”, judging by forum search hits and his posts) had ฿11 (then $935) confiscated via a drug law provision Hughes blames; he was arrested in June 2013 and triply charged in Charleston with distribution/possession of marijuana/Clonazepam/DMT/Methylone but he did not seem to be selling marijuana on SR and the available court records do not indicate whether he is being charged due to offline or online drug dealing, but the mention of “two undercover drug buys…in April” imply he was selling off-SR and may have been caught that way.
In December 2012, a New Jersey man was busted for marijuana in a controlled delivery when the package was detected in the mail; he cooperated (no additional penalties specified in article) and 2 sellers were eventually arrested & charged in July 2013.
In January 2013, according to the SR bust indictments, an employee of SR was arrested in Maryland after receiving a kilo of cocaine from an undercover agent; he then cooperated with the FBI in pretending to be dead, but it is currently unknown whether he was charged with anything or convicted. In March 2013, an Alaskan buyer of heroin & cocaine apparently received a controlled delivery, and received felony charges; he cooperated in the ongoing investigation of his seller, “NOD”, according to the indictment for NOD.
An otherwise-unknown female buyer from NOD seems to have been similarly arrested in April/May according to the TSG article on NOD. A New York man was prosecuted in August 2013 after selling Suboxone in person, having his mail monitored, and then his store (with drugs on the premises) raided.
A major BMR seller seems to have been arrested & charged in Kentucky in August/September 2013 for international gun sales, after packages were intercepted. In October 2013, the founder of SR, DPR, was arrested in San Francisco and charged with a laundry list of crimes. Simultaneous with the SR bust, a Washington state man & his girlfriend, the seller “NOD”, was charged with heroin selling (complaint, docket) with some leniency since they cooperated after their July bust; a pseudonymous Redditor claims to have been a customer of NOD, among other sellers, and to have been searched, arrested & charged on 8 October 2013, with (apparently) another pseudonymous Redditor reporting state charges & posting his indictment. (Interestingly, NOD did a interview for the Drugs Inc. TV series somewhere around March 2013.)
We Will try to keep an eye for future updates to this list that im sure will be soon to come
Updated: 2013-10-25