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Doge
Stranger Danger


Registered: 10/07/13
Posts: 12
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Feds Arrest Alleged Top Silk Road Drug Seller
#18953525 - 10/09/13 10:01 AM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Ok before this turns into "Hurr Durr they cracked tor, everybody is going to get arrested", do yourself a favor and read the criminal complaint. There is a link in the article.
Best, Doge.
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/10/feds-arrest-alleged-top-silk-road-drug-seller/
Federal authorities last week arrested a Washington state man accused of being one of the most active and sought-after drug dealers on the online black market known as the “Silk Road.” Meanwhile, new details about the recent coordinated takedown of the Silk Road became public, as other former buyers and sellers on the fraud bazaar pondered who might be next and whether competing online drug markets will move in to fill the void.
A complaint unsealed Oct. 2 by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle alleges that Steven Lloyd Sadler, 40, of Bellevue, Wash., used the nickname “NOD” on the Silk Road, and was among the “top one percent of sellers” on the Silk Road, selling high-quality cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine in small, individual-use amounts to hundreds of buyers around the world.
Investigators with the FBI and U.S. Post Office inspectors say they tracked dozens of packages containing drugs allegedly shipped by Sadler and a woman who was living with him at the time of his arrest. Authorities tied Sadler to the Silk Road after intercepting a package of cocaine and heroin destined for an Alaskan resident. That resident agreed to cooperate with authorities in the hopes of reducing his own sentence, and said he’d purchased the drugs from NOD via the Silk Road.
Agents in Seattle sought and were granted permission to place GPS tracking devices on Sadler’s car and that of his roommate, Jenna White, also charged in this case. Investigators allege that the tracking showed the two traveled to at least 38 post offices in the Seattle area during the surveillance period.
Interestingly, the investigators used the feedback on NOD’s Silk Road seller profile to get a sense of the volume of drugs he sold. Much like eBay sellers, merchants on the Silk Road are evaluated by previous buyers, who are encouraged to leave feedback about the quality of the seller’s goods and services. 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. The complaint notes that these amounts don’t count sales going back more than five months prior to the investigation, when NOD first created his Silk Road vendor account.
Cryptome has published a copy of the complaint (PDF) against Sadler. A copy of Sadler’s case docket is here. NOD’s reputation on the Silk Road also was discussed for several months on this Reddit thread.
Many readers of last week’s story on the Silk Road takedown have been asking what is known about the locations of the Silk Road servers that were copied by the FBI. It’s still unclear how agents gained access to those servers, but a civil forfeiture complaint released by the Justice Department shows that they were aware of five, geographically dispersed servers that were supporting the Silk Road, either by directly hosting the site and/or hosting the Bitcoin wallets that the Silk Road maintains for buyers and sellers.
Two of those servers were located in Iceland, one in Latvia, another in Romania, and apparently one in the United States. See the map above.
As if the subset of Bitcoin users who frequented the Silk Road already didn’t have enough to worry about, there are indications that the individual(s) responsible for creating a competing Tor-based drug market — SheepMarketplace — may have made some missteps that could make it easier for authorities to discover the true location of that fraud bazaar as well. Check out this Reddit thread for more on that.
Also, there are some indications that a Silk Road 2.0 is in the works, at least according to DailyGadgetry.com. If that doesn’t work out, perhaps would-be future Dread Pirate Robertses will turn to Bitwasp, a budding Github project which aims to provide open source code for setting up standalone markets using Bitcoin.
“I think what you’re going to see is that a lot of me-too communities spring up and get squished pretty quickly,” said Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) and at University of California San Diego. “Part of the reason why the Silk Road was so useful was that it was so popular, and a half dozen smaller markets could be far less efficient than these larger markets. But personally, I’m betting we’ll soon see a fair number of them.”
Finally, it seems a large number of Bitcoin users have been spending tiny fractions of their coinage to send messages to the FBI’s Bitcoin address on Blockchain. Some of the love letters to the FBI are amusing, such as, “All your Bitcoins are belong to us,” while others sound a defiant tone, including this one: ”One star is born as another fades away. Which one will come next? is my favorite riddle.” Said a girl puffing rings in a dot, dot, dash haze. “No worry, No hurry. They can’t stop the signal.”
Update, Oct. 8, 2013, 10:30 a.m.: The BBC is reporting that four men have been arrested in the U.K. for alleged drug offenses on the Silk Road, and that more arrests are expected in the coming weeks. The BBC quotes the U.K. National Crime Agency as saying such sites would are a “key priority.”
Update, Oct. 8, 2013, 1:32 p.m.: This Swedish news site is reporting that two men from Helsingborg have been arrested on suspicion of transacting in marijuana via the Silk Road.
Update, Oct. 9, 2013, 9:32 a.m.: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that one of the servers seized by U.S. authorities was in Switzerland. Closer examination of the data reveals that the server was actually at a bulletproof hosting provider called Voxility, in Bucharest, Romania.
Edited by Doge (10/09/13 10:08 AM)
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Durin


Registered: 01/06/13
Posts: 165
Last seen: 4 years, 10 months
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Re: Feds Arrest Alleged Top Silk Road Drug Seller [Re: Doge]
#18953613 - 10/09/13 10:27 AM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Why do they call it a "fraud bazaar"? People want drugs, sellers sell it to them, there was probably no more fraud going on than a supermarket.
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Doge
Stranger Danger


Registered: 10/07/13
Posts: 12
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Re: Feds Arrest Alleged Top Silk Road Drug Seller [Re: Durin]
#18953647 - 10/09/13 10:36 AM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Yeah I am a little curious about that as well. The rest of the article is pretty good besides that. He is writing from an IT security standpoint though so he could be referring explicitly to those who dealt with selling exploits and credit card info and stuff.
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Camwritesgonzo
The Unflushable Stool



Registered: 06/09/12
Posts: 2,333
Loc: On Uranus
Last seen: 5 months, 24 days
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Re: Feds Arrest Alleged Top Silk Road Drug Seller [Re: Durin]
#18954231 - 10/09/13 12:51 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
Durin said: Why do they call it a "fraud bazaar"? People want drugs, sellers sell it to them, there was probably no more fraud going on than a supermarket.
And definitely no more fraud than what's been going on atop capital hill.
-------------------- "I've always maintained that reality is for those who can't face drugs."-Tom Waits "I feel the same way about disco as I feel about herpes."-Hunter S. Thompson A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
 
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HybridprX
Biodegrader of coir



Registered: 01/29/08 
Posts: 2,588
Loc: Canada
Last seen: 6 years, 4 months
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Re: Feds Arrest Alleged Top Silk Road Drug Seller [Re: Camwritesgonzo]
#18954323 - 10/09/13 01:13 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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The fraud bizare is because any true anonymity expert would know that to stay one hundred percent anonymous you do the following.
Acess the internet via another persons Wifi than Tor.
Acquire two sets of stolen or fake I.D's to open a P.O box (close to location pick up) and the other P.O as a mail forwarding box.
And, open a online bank account to transfer funds to, to make bit coin purchases prior to entering them into a tumbler.
So all in all, a true SR member would need three sets of id's to stay anonymous.
A good portion of SR's buyers were -21 and I doubt many of them took the physical aspects of staying anonymous into perspective. A computer will only take you so far to hide your intent. 
As for me, I'd trojan up a few boxes and tunnel Tor right threw my own VPN. But I don't use drugs so... All this is just a resource.
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CidneyIndole
www.shroomery.OG



Registered: 05/16/05
Posts: 4,761
Loc: Love's Secret Domain
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Re: Feds Arrest Alleged Top Silk Road Drug Seller [Re: HybridprX]
#18954373 - 10/09/13 01:22 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Thought we already had an article about this.
Guy actually supposedly got busted due to a combination of shit luck and bad decisions.
A dog supposedly hit on various packages for containing drugs. One of those packages didn't actually contain drugs, but rather several thousand dollars. One of the addresses on this cash package was a PO box opened with a fake ID. And that's pretty much how they got the guy.
The whole case was actually a bit more detailed than that. Finding multiple packages via dogs, controlled guys, etc. But it was a PO box address on a package of cash that really did him in.
-------------------- ------------------------ I am me. We are You.
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Maharishi_2_U
Opt Out Super Fag


Registered: 10/21/09
Posts: 6,316
Loc: The Streets
Last seen: 8 years, 10 months
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Re: Feds Arrest Alleged Top Silk Road Drug Seller [Re: CidneyIndole]
#18954646 - 10/09/13 02:26 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
CidneyIndole said: Thought we already had an article about this.
Guy actually supposedly got busted due to a combination of shit luck and bad decisions.
A dog supposedly hit on various packages for containing drugs. One of those packages didn't actually contain drugs, but rather several thousand dollars. One of the addresses on this cash package was a PO box opened with a fake ID. And that's pretty much how they got the guy.
The whole case was actually a bit more detailed than that. Finding multiple packages via dogs, controlled guys, etc. But it was a PO box address on a package of cash that really did him in.
Thanks for restating what has been restated there hoss. People fuck with illegal shit, they usually have a poor result in the end. Risk vs Reward
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sonamdrukpa
Wayfarer


Registered: 10/18/11
Posts: 2,777
Last seen: 2 months, 8 days
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Re: Feds Arrest Alleged Top Silk Road Drug Seller [Re: Maharishi_2_U]
#18954953 - 10/09/13 03:33 PM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
Maharishi_2_U said:
Quote:
CidneyIndole said: Thought we already had an article about this.
Guy actually supposedly got busted due to a combination of shit luck and bad decisions.
A dog supposedly hit on various packages for containing drugs. One of those packages didn't actually contain drugs, but rather several thousand dollars. One of the addresses on this cash package was a PO box opened with a fake ID. And that's pretty much how they got the guy.
The whole case was actually a bit more detailed than that. Finding multiple packages via dogs, controlled guys, etc. But it was a PO box address on a package of cash that really did him in.
Thanks for restating what has been restated there hoss. People fuck with illegal shit, they usually have a poor result in the end. Risk vs Reward
Your conclusion on this is subject to a severe selection bias in that, by definition, you will never know about nor hear of those who got away with it.
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Maharishi_2_U
Opt Out Super Fag


Registered: 10/21/09
Posts: 6,316
Loc: The Streets
Last seen: 8 years, 10 months
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Re: Feds Arrest Alleged Top Silk Road Drug Seller [Re: sonamdrukpa]
#18958269 - 10/10/13 08:06 AM (10 years, 3 months ago) |
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The word usually..... I have gotten away with plenty as have my family members. Just a little factoid. Have an awesome day ya'all :-)
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