WIRED: Silk Road’s Second-in-Command Gets 20 Years in Prison. “NEARLY TEN YEARS ago, the sprawling dark-web drug market known as the Silk Road was torn offline in a law enforcement operation coordinated by the FBI, whose agents arrested the black market’s boss, Ross Ulbricht, in a San Francisco library. It would take two years for Ulbricht’s second-in-command—an elusive figure known as Variety Jones—to be tracked down and arrested in Thailand. Today, a decade after the Silk Road’s demise, Clark has been sentenced to join his former boss in federal prison.”
Tag Archives: drug trafficking
Texas Standard: Fentanyl’s rise, distribution tied to growth of social media
Texas Standard: Fentanyl’s rise, distribution tied to growth of social media. “According to an expert who studies drug trafficking, fentanyl is the new ‘social media drug’ and Mexican criminal groups are exploiting the technology to dominate the market – recruiting dealers in Texas to peddle the opioid.”
Sydney Morning Herald: Secret agents targeting drug cartels in Australia exposed in data hack
Sydney Morning Herald: Secret agents targeting drug cartels in Australia exposed in data hack. “A massive leak of classified documents from the Colombian government has exposed the identities and methods of secret agents working to stop international drug cartels from operating in Australia. More than five terabytes of data, including more than five million emails and tens of thousands of documents, were hacked and held in a password-protected database in August.”
Politico: Justice Department announces 150 arrests from dark web drug crackdown
Politico: Justice Department announces 150 arrests from dark web drug crackdown. “The roughly 10-month initiative — dubbed Operation Dark HunTOR, after the encrypted internet tool — was conducted in partnership with international counterparts and also yielded 234 kilograms of seized drugs. Of those arrested, 65 were in the United States and the rest were in a handful of European countries including Germany, France and the United Kingdom.”
Guns, Drugs and Viral Content: Welcome to Cartel TikTok (New York Times)
New York Times: Guns, Drugs and Viral Content: Welcome to Cartel TikTok. “Tiger cubs and semiautomatic weapons. Piles of cash and armored cars. Fields of poppies watered to the sound of ballads glorifying Mexican drug cartel culture. This is the world of Cartel TikTok, a genre of videos depicting drug trafficking groups and their activities that is racking up hundreds of thousands of views on the popular social media platform.”
France24: Mexico creates database of clandestine graves
France24: Mexico creates database of clandestine graves. “Mexico said Tuesday it has created a database on the hundreds of clandestine graves found in recent years as the country struggles with a wave of violent crime linked to drug trafficking.”
The Verge: The golden age of dark web drug markets is over
The Verge: The golden age of dark web drug markets is over. “In July 2017, federal agents took down the Alphabay marketplace, then one of the largest and most profitable sources for drugs on the dark web. At the time, it seemed like a messy end to the string of dark net takedowns that started with the Silk Road. But more than a year and a half after the takedown, federal agents are still making arrests in Alphabay cases, chasing down dealers who sold drugs through the site.”