

Feds Arrest Alleged Top Silk Road Drug Seller - clarkm
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/10/feds-arrest-alleged-top-silk-road-drug-seller/

======
dreen
So the top seller on SR sold 2kg of coke, 0,5kg of heroin and 100g of meth in
nearly half a year? You can imagine all the Tony Montanas of this world
lifting their eyes up from their coffers each filled with 100 times that
amount of drugs, before erupting with maniacal laughter and proceeding to
bribe more politicians into perpetuating the digital arm of this war.

~~~
ledge
2 kg cocaine = 2000 grams x 100$/gram = 200,000$

500 grams heroin x 200$/gram = 100,000$

100 grams meth x 200$/gram = 20,000$

320,000$ revenue in 5 months is not bad, considering that dealers of hard
drugs at least double up on their investment. I can also think of vendors on
SR that were moving a lot more weight than this, just based on their public
feedback. Plus keep in mind that some of the largest vendors were not publicly
listed.

Over 1 1/2 years ago, the vendor tony76 made off with over 100,000$ in a
single week in one of the largest SR scams.

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greenyoda
_" According to the government, NOD had 1,400 reviews for individual
sales/purchases of small amounts of drugs, including: 2,269.5 grams of
cocaine, 593 grams of heroin and 105 grams of meth."_

I may be naive, but is 2 kilos of cocaine really a "small amount of drugs"?
Isn't that an amount that a drug dealer would buy, as opposed to a user?

According to this reference[1], a kilo of cocaine generally costs anywhere
from $12,000 to $35,000.

[1] [http://www.sethson.com/how-much-does-a-gram-of-cocaine-
cost-...](http://www.sethson.com/how-much-does-a-gram-of-cocaine-cost-on-the-
street)

~~~
WarDekar
That is the cumulative amounts that he sold I believe, which means that
through 1,400 reviews the actual amount per sale is quite small (as they note,
individual amounts per sale not bulk sales).

If you're talking about the course of a year or two of sales, sales in the 10s
and even 100s of thousands isn't all that much if you consider the profit
margin. What kind of volume do you think an eBay or Amazon seller does in a
year to make $100k?

~~~
dustcoin

        The complaint notes that these amounts don’t count sales
        going back more than five months prior to the investigation
    

The volume estimated is only for a 5 month period, not the defendants' entire
careers. Drug dealers have much higher margins than eBay sellers, according to
one source earning a 200% markup (66% profit margin) splitting up kilos of
cocaine [1]

[1] [http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-08-13/soon-be-
disr...](http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-08-13/soon-be-disrupted-
industry-enjoys-margins-multiples-cocaine-dealers)

------
o1iver
Looking at the reddit thread [0] referenced in the article I am really
suprised about how openly those redditors are talking about illegal drug
purchases (incl. personal experiences, etc). Aren't they worried that they
might be investigated?

[0]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/1b6hmh/nod/](http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/1b6hmh/nod/)

~~~
dr_doom
I'm not. Police don't usually go after small time users. Any good city cop can
find a trap house and pinpoint the crack heads going in and out. It's a waste
of resources to arrest them though, they want the distributors.

BUT I also never thought they would bust SR dealers...

------
ericingram
Is anyone still convinced that prohibition is the best way to reduce drug
abuse?

~~~
ihsw
Reducing drug abuse was once the goal, but not anymore. It's all about
punishing people now.

~~~
PilateDeGuerre
>It's all about punishing people now.

I'll quibble: It is all about controlling people. Punishment is one, of many,
forms of control used in modern society.

------
neals
Who would have guessed that sending eachother drug through the mail would get
you caught by law enforcement.

Great way to get people back on the street, selling face to face, maybe get
stabbed a litte. Much safer.

~~~
camus
> Who would have guessed that sending eachother drug through the mail would
> get you caught by law enforcement.

Illegal drug dealing is ... illegal.But you did not know that did you...

~~~
madaxe
Drugs are bad, because drugs are bad, m'kay?

~~~
Sae5waip
No drugs are bad because they're addictive and have negative health effects.

~~~
malka
Please, can you post me an article about the addicitive nature, and the
negative health effect of LSD ?

~~~
Sae5waip
Point taken.

BTW, I did find this[1] graph very interesting.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drug_danger_and_dependenc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drug_danger_and_dependence.svg)

------
eksith
Article shows a "Thor Data Center" in Iceland. This looked awfully familiar
and it turned out to be owned by Advania:
[http://www.advania.com/datacentres](http://www.advania.com/datacentres)

Found via: [http://www.datacentermap.com/iceland/reykjavik/thor-data-
cen...](http://www.datacentermap.com/iceland/reykjavik/thor-data-center.html)

------
sah2ed
Seems a misconfiguration error, which occurred in May, revealed that one of
the dedicated servers used to run SR was owned by GigaTux.

[http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/10177/anyone-use-
gigatux](http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/10177/anyone-use-gigatux)

------
technotony
What this doesn't say, is how they tracked the guy after the intercept. My
guess is that they somehow cracked more of the security than we have been lead
to believe...

~~~
mxxx
Read the complaint PDF. Basically when they started finding stuff in the mail,
they noticed most packages looked pretty similar. Went down to the post office
where some of them were being shipped from, told them to keep an eye out for
similar packages. Didn't take them long to track down a couple of people who
were posting them, etc, etc.

Even if the buyer had been strongarmed by the feds into cooperating for a
deal, I don't think they'd have much useful information to catch the seller
with, apart from an account that the seller trusted that they could use to
order more packages, and they would have used his testimony to link the
activities of Sadler/White to the NOD account.

edit: yeah, read the whole thing. it's actually pretty simple policework.

~~~
technotony
I guess that means they found several packages from this one guy, which means
the intercept rate is above 0.1% (I guess not too hard to sniff drugs in the
mail) - that shows that buying is not a very safe activity (especially
regularly!). I find the whole thing fascinating, learning lots about security
and police etc. Where's the link to the complaint PDF?

~~~
sah2ed
[http://cryptome.org/2013/10/sadler-white-
complaint.pdf](http://cryptome.org/2013/10/sadler-white-complaint.pdf)

