- Joined
- Sep 18, 2016
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Well this month has been quite interesting for many reasons; not all of which are due to the hype surrounding the coming MayMac showdown and all of the pressers for it. As I'm sure plenty of other Sherdoggers have seen around the web, the largest dark web market has been taken down by the US government once again.
However, unlike Ulbricht (the founder of the Silk Road who just received a DOUBLE life sentence), the suspected founder of Alphabay was found hanging in a Thai prison cell.
Ulbricht: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/30/...d-website-is-sentenced-to-life-in-prison.html
Cazes: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...market-remains-closed/?utm_term=.eb1b8254e174
This man was known online as DeSnake and his real name was Alexandre Cazes. According to a few different articles who have since compiled a profile of the guy, he was an eccentric 20-something Canadian living in Thailand. The guy owned multiple villas and several cars (the homes alone were valued around 12m USD), I'm not sure how many million of Thai Baht that comes out to...
My question is: how in the world did this guy start making $20,000/day and start buying up luxury items and properties and avoid detection for as long as he did? Granted it took them less time to take down Alphabay then it did Silk Road; but the guy still had millions of dollars in unexplained income. It's just insane to me that someone intelligent enough to set up such an operation could be so foolish.
Now many questions remain; DID they get the right guy, or was Cazes just the fall guy? It's awful suspicious that he was just found dead in his cell within hours of being apprehended... Additionally, is uncle Same going to start going after ALL the major dealers? With Silk Road, they did the whole "This website has been seized by the US government", but with Alphabay they either weren't able to or chose not to do the same.
Now just a few days after the site has been down, vendors and buyers alike are flocking to the other dark web markets who have flat out denied the creation of new accounts/registrations because they don't have the server capacity or staff to do the job, and honestly I just don't think ANYONE wants to be in that top spot anymore. Many entrepreneur seem to be okay with smaller but safer operations.
And this just in: a fake-heroin dealer from the East coast has been picked up in the first raid resulting from the seizure of the site. Clearly the agencies that took down Alphabay have been mining everything they have seized for information about vendors from the market. As recently as June 10th, the NY Times was writing pieces about dark web drug dealers sending deadly batches of fetanyl to underage customers all across the US, often resulting in deadly overdoses.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/business/dealbook/opioid-dark-web-drug-overdose.html
Now, one of these vendors from Alphabay named "Narcoboss", has been swooped up in connection with a lethal overdose in a similar case.
http://www.philly.com/philly/busine...order-narcoboss-out-of-business-20170713.html
So what's next? Or rather, who is next?
Some important things to consider going forward:
1) Cazes was never convicted and never gave a deposition which could implicate other people or organizations that he was involved with and his "suicide" within hours of his arrest is not only highly irregular for such cases, it's damn near unprecedented. Most of the talk on the dark web about the operators of Alphabay centered on the belief that they were connected to the Russian Mafia, and yet now we're supposed to believe that this 26 year old with multiple villas and luxury cars was the HEAD of Alphabay and its "genius" founder? I'm not so sure.
2) With all of the vendors scattering and trying to re-organize for their natural migration to new markets, are we going to see massive sweeps from law enforcement agencies around the world acting on information the US will harvest from its Alphabay evidence? So far, many vendors have yet to re-surface and many more buyers are still licking their wounds due to the massive losses incurred from funds being left in market wallets.
3) Are we seeing the beginning of the end of true online anonymity?
However, unlike Ulbricht (the founder of the Silk Road who just received a DOUBLE life sentence), the suspected founder of Alphabay was found hanging in a Thai prison cell.
Ulbricht: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/30/...d-website-is-sentenced-to-life-in-prison.html
Cazes: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...market-remains-closed/?utm_term=.eb1b8254e174
This man was known online as DeSnake and his real name was Alexandre Cazes. According to a few different articles who have since compiled a profile of the guy, he was an eccentric 20-something Canadian living in Thailand. The guy owned multiple villas and several cars (the homes alone were valued around 12m USD), I'm not sure how many million of Thai Baht that comes out to...
My question is: how in the world did this guy start making $20,000/day and start buying up luxury items and properties and avoid detection for as long as he did? Granted it took them less time to take down Alphabay then it did Silk Road; but the guy still had millions of dollars in unexplained income. It's just insane to me that someone intelligent enough to set up such an operation could be so foolish.
Now many questions remain; DID they get the right guy, or was Cazes just the fall guy? It's awful suspicious that he was just found dead in his cell within hours of being apprehended... Additionally, is uncle Same going to start going after ALL the major dealers? With Silk Road, they did the whole "This website has been seized by the US government", but with Alphabay they either weren't able to or chose not to do the same.
Now just a few days after the site has been down, vendors and buyers alike are flocking to the other dark web markets who have flat out denied the creation of new accounts/registrations because they don't have the server capacity or staff to do the job, and honestly I just don't think ANYONE wants to be in that top spot anymore. Many entrepreneur seem to be okay with smaller but safer operations.
And this just in: a fake-heroin dealer from the East coast has been picked up in the first raid resulting from the seizure of the site. Clearly the agencies that took down Alphabay have been mining everything they have seized for information about vendors from the market. As recently as June 10th, the NY Times was writing pieces about dark web drug dealers sending deadly batches of fetanyl to underage customers all across the US, often resulting in deadly overdoses.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/business/dealbook/opioid-dark-web-drug-overdose.html
Now, one of these vendors from Alphabay named "Narcoboss", has been swooped up in connection with a lethal overdose in a similar case.
http://www.philly.com/philly/busine...order-narcoboss-out-of-business-20170713.html
So what's next? Or rather, who is next?
Some important things to consider going forward:
1) Cazes was never convicted and never gave a deposition which could implicate other people or organizations that he was involved with and his "suicide" within hours of his arrest is not only highly irregular for such cases, it's damn near unprecedented. Most of the talk on the dark web about the operators of Alphabay centered on the belief that they were connected to the Russian Mafia, and yet now we're supposed to believe that this 26 year old with multiple villas and luxury cars was the HEAD of Alphabay and its "genius" founder? I'm not so sure.
2) With all of the vendors scattering and trying to re-organize for their natural migration to new markets, are we going to see massive sweeps from law enforcement agencies around the world acting on information the US will harvest from its Alphabay evidence? So far, many vendors have yet to re-surface and many more buyers are still licking their wounds due to the massive losses incurred from funds being left in market wallets.
3) Are we seeing the beginning of the end of true online anonymity?
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