Dark Web Drug Vendor Pleads Guilty After Feds Traced His Bitcoin Transactions

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/legal/dark-web-drug-vendor-pleads-guilty-after-feds-traced-his-bitcoin-transactions/

by wglb • 8 years ago

67 98 8 years ago

bleepingcomputer.com

jMyles4• 8 years ago

Finally, chemical compounds in demand by adults for private consumption will no longer be available. Victory in the war on drugs!

tylersmith15• 8 years ago

You're being downvoted but imprisoning OxyMonster for selling things to willing customers will have almost 0 effect on the opioid markets. It's a costly symbolic gesture that will affect nobody but him and his family.

nighthawk12• 8 years ago

I think many times these arrests are meant to be a demonstration that law enforcement is doing their job. I imagine even the arresting agents realize this guy is a drop in the ocean and his customers will quickly flock to his replacement.

Similar to those folks who work in a corporate environment who complete a document that they know will be jettisoned into a corporate black hole but checks off a requirement.

Clubber4• 8 years ago

I'm fairly certain the OP was being sarcastic.

belorn• 8 years ago

That almost 0 effect is what practical every form of enforcement against smuggling is going to be. A person not declaring items being brought into the country is very unlikely to have a effect on the federal budget, or any effect of on a legal market, and yet practical all border controls has someone employed to check for undeclared items.

tylersmith15• 8 years ago

Using technology to subvert the State is a large cat and mouse game and the first mice are bound to make mistakes. It's the risk of jumping in before having a better grasp of the underlying technology that you rely on for security. Eventually the market will move nearly completely to more private currencies but the "game" will continue. Some people like to focus on the "high reward" part of "high risk/high reward" a lot more than the "high risk" part.

CodeWriter23• 8 years ago

Storing one’s ledger in a publicly-viewable, massively replicated database is a pretty big on the risk factors IMO.

tylersmith15• 8 years ago

Yes, absolutely. Unfortunately the majority of people don't fully understand what the system is and how it works. Sound bites and misinformation are regurgitated and spread like the plague while solid understanding requires a lot of work exploration.

cf4988• 8 years ago

US authorities arrested Vallerius in September last year, at the Atlanta airport after he arrived in the US to attend and participate in the World Beard and Mustache Championships that was being held in Austin, Texas.

And is facing a life sentence.

Dont travel to such countries. Never ever period.

Crossing a border is a big decision, no matter how cheap the tickets are. I dont get people who keep doing this, its not like those are split second decisions.

Why in your right mind would you do this without carefully considering what the effects of you being in that country might be. I had female friends talking about going to holiday in Dubai, another friend with a Turkish passport visited his family in the south east recently.

Think for a moment for gods sake.

tylersmith15• 8 years ago

Overconfidence is one of OPSECs biggest vulnerabilities. He was much safer in France but clearly felt he was completely under the radar. Using LocalBitcoin accounts directly is a big sign that he didn't fully understand how deeply he was in a mess.

nighthawk12• 8 years ago

Similarly when these folks hang out in countries that would happily extradite to the USA. The smarter ones thought ahead about such matters.

giarc2• 8 years ago

He obviously didn't know they had his identity, but I would agree, if running a criminal enterprise, be careful where you go.

cf4988• 8 years ago

Not just then. Your local laws and rights dont mean shit in your holiday destination. This should be the very first question you ask yourself when traveling.

kbenson• 8 years ago

if running a criminal enterprise, be careful where you go.

More specifically, and more commonly, if you have or will break local laws in a country, be careful of visiting there.

In some locations, that means don't be gay, or don't be a women out of a specific outfit, etc.

forapurpose• 8 years ago

That's quite an attitude toward international travel, something practiced by millions of people for business and pleasure every day.

cf4988• 8 years ago

Who hopefully keep in mind the consequences. You (hopefully) wouldnt travel to Somalia, the fact that other countries arent in headlines doesnt mean they are a safe destination.

nine_k• 8 years ago

Few of them run major criminal operations. Hence the presumption of safety when traveling to "safe and civilized" countries.

pjc502• 8 years ago

Always read the small print. Every now and again someone forgets that other countries can be quite different. Drugs policies are the usual one e.g. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/7801410/Dubai-...

.. but it's also possible to become an accidental tourist in someone else's civil war. Or, in the case of this guy, forget that committing crimes internationally can make you wanted in the US.

pcthrowaway• 8 years ago

Just to clarify, he was sentenced to 20 years (with the plea deal). If he's lucky, he may get out in 10.

cf4988• 8 years ago

I just recently learned about the parole system in the US, do I understand it correctly, that he wouldnt be allowed to leave the country until the 20 years are up?

tptacek2• 8 years ago

He was charged federally, and federal prisons don't do parole. If he was sentenced to 20 years, he'll do most of those 20 years.

throwawayjava• 8 years ago

Alternative advice: don't become a drug dealer.

pstuart• 8 years ago

Those drugs aren’t gonna sell themselves

deltateam4• 8 years ago

I had female friends talking about going to holiday in Dubai

You get a 1-dimensional perspective every time something local goes wrong and is masqueraded as international news. Its like if a civil rights violation from one US city on any given day was elevated to the world stage. It would sound like much more of a nightmare than anything going on in the UAE.

Most females I've talked to absolutely love Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Even people that have moved there.

The best analogy to the experience is Disney World. Lots of thrills, and adult sexual behavior is stifled, except for minor infractions instead of simply thrown out of the park you'll be thrown in a horrible prison.

The fact of the matter is that you're not one of the slaves. That side of things won't be your experience.

You hope you don't get sexually assaulted and judicially victim blamed, and thats the same anywhere.

momentmaker• 8 years ago

You should check out #tagyoursponsor to realize why they like it there so much.

newfoundglory• 8 years ago

Most women I know wouldn't go there - including myself. Maybe we run in different circles.

mnm1• 8 years ago

Dubai is not safe for anyone to visit. You can have a microscopic spec of cannabis on your shoe or three poppy seeds and you get years in jail. That's not at all like everywhere else. In fact, it's laws like these that typically get places labeled uncivilized and barbaric. In Dubai's case I think the slavery, oppression of women, and other laws typically fulfill that label even better. No place with such laws is a place I would visit or encourage anyone to visit. Who knows what other stupid laws they will try to enforce on unsuspecting travelers who don't even know they are in violation?

https://newsone.com/409392/brit-jailed-in-dubai-for-4-years-...

s73v3r_6• 8 years ago

"And is facing a life sentence. Dont travel to such countries. Never ever period."

Wouldn't the proper thing to take away is, "don't become a drug kingpin"?

laretluval• 8 years ago

You don't become a prominent online drug vendor because of a careful, risk-averse disposition.

pjc502• 8 years ago

Crossing a border is a big decision, no matter how cheap the tickets are.

While generally I agree with you, some are trivial. Especially where the EU has gone to great effort to make them trivial to cross. Or where they are fractal and run through houses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-Nassau

jonhendry184• 8 years ago

It's completely trivial to cross between states inside the US, but if the next state over legalizes marijuana, and you take a road trip to bring back some weed and edibles, by crossing state lines your road trip may become a Federal drug trafficking offense, with severe penalties if caught.

Even the easiest border crossing can carry significant risks depending on the context.

yolo1897• 8 years ago

they found so much on his laptop, he didn't even bothered to encrypt his stuff? it seems that he have made so many mistakes for his job

always_good• 8 years ago

Even then, nothing seems perfect.

I have FileVault turned on in OSX. But I noticed that, since the latest version, if I open my laptop within some interval, it doesn't even make me type my password again.

And sometimes I've even opened my laptop many hours later and it inexplicably bypasses the login. Just seems so precarious.

I read how the FBI(?) faked a scene (a fight?) near the Silk Road creator so that they could nab his laptop while it was open. Well, I chuckle at how unnecessary that would be for my laptop: just walk up and open it. The piece of shit probably won't even make you log in.

ttoinou• 8 years ago

   All in all, this is just another case where authorities have proven once
   more that Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency isn't really anonymous
   as it was advertised for the past decade.

Wait who advertised that ? I have always read that bitcoin was pseudonymous (not anonymous) and with public record of all transactions and wallets

tylersmith15• 8 years ago

Unfortunately it's a common misconception. Many people with a surge knowledge if the technology believe it's anonymous. It seems like that the guy himself believed it was anonymous.

deltateam4• 8 years ago

"wait, my employer isn't automatically withholding the earnings from this money, I've never been in this situation before, does nobody know that I have some money now, so therefore I don't have to pay taxes!"

pretty much everyone in cryptocurrency, whether they thought a little harder about it or not

dogma11384• 8 years ago

Bitcoin isn’t really pseudonymous either (not by design) it only has one type of transaction that is always public and there is no inherent deniability as far as wallet ownership goes.

There are some currencies that attempt at providing anonymity or at least deniability but those also haven’t been tested yet either against capable forensic adversaries.

ethn• 8 years ago

It has many types of transactions, in fact it has an entire script language for creating different types.

coralreef2• 8 years ago

Isn't it pseudonymous? You use addresses to send and receive money, not your real identity. And anyone can generate addresses in a vacuum. Combine that with a VPN or some network routing, and its basically a mountain of work to trace any address or transaction to a person.

alistproducer2• 8 years ago

Dude's OPSEC game was pretty weak. If you're going to do stuff that could get you imprisoned for life, you'd think you would be more thorough.

yani• 8 years ago

It is not right to have customs search his laptop. Anyone with that much power will abuse it one way or another.

cstejerean• 8 years ago

Why isn’t it right? By this point they had a very reasonable suspicion that he was the criminal they were looking for based on his bitcoin addresses and then further confirmed by analyzing the writing style. That certainly seems like a good enough reason to search someone’s laptop.

tptacek2• 8 years ago

Customs in most (maybe all?) countries enjoy something pretty close to absolute search powers.

cup-of-tea• 8 years ago

Did he try to sell drugs in the US? How can they arrest him for things he did back home?

tylersmith15• 8 years ago

For selling to US customers. Similar to the GDPR and European customers.

merinowool• 8 years ago

It is not going to be long before people will have to wear armbands stating their citizenship...

joeblow9999• 8 years ago

International treaties between all the countries effectively make most USA laws international.

armitron• 8 years ago

Even with all the mistakes that he made, I think he would have easily walked had he not done the thing that sealed his fate: bringing his hot "work" laptop (possibly unencrypted or otherwise compromised) with him to the US.

All his other mistakes put together were not enough for the feds to hang him since there is plausible deniability:

The "writing style analysis" may seem advanced but in practice is laughable in terms of false positives.

Being in a possession of a bitcoin address that received payments from a drug trafficker isn't enough evidence to convict. But of course allowing the feds to go through his laptop where he had the trafficking signing keys and other credentials can not be explained away :-0

58x142• 8 years ago

I don’t understand the sentiment of these comments. This isn’t an impressive example of mass blockchain-and-IP-address correlation and collection - this is an embarrassing example of an inexperienced user publically posting wallet IDs directly linked to his Localbitcoins account.

This is as much “tracing” as it would take to look up a license plate. Add to that a lack of full disk encryption and international travel...

dang2• 8 years ago

Could you please not use allcaps for emphasis in HN comments?

This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

58x142• 8 years ago

To what are you referring? /s

amingilani• 8 years ago

And this is why Zcash excites me so much! It's everything Bitcoin is and much, much, more!

Dark Web Drug Vendor Pleads Guilty After Feds Traced His Bitcoin Transactions

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