Dark Web Marketplace AlphaBay Shuts For Good After Police Raids (theregister.co.uk)

Dark web marketplace AlphaBay's closure last week followed an international law enforcement operation and multiple raids, it has emerged. It has also been reported that a key suspect who was arrested in the raids has died in custody. From a report: The world's biggest online drug bazaar dropped offline on 5 July, sparking fears that its administrators had disappeared taking a swag bag of digital currency with them, pulling an "exit scam" like other dark web marketplace kingpins before them. The Wall Street Journal reports that a Canadian suspected of running AlphaBay was arrested in Thailand on 5 July following an international police operation involving authorities in the US and Canada as well as Thailand. Alexandre Cazes, the 26-year-old who had been accused of being the site's admin, was found dead in a Thai jail cell on Wednesday, the WSJ adds. The Bangkok Post reported that Cazes had been resident in Thailand for about eight years and had a Thai wife. Thai authorities said they'd seized four Lamborghini cars and three upmarket residences with a combined value of $11.7m (400 million Thai Baht). US authorities had apparently been seeking to extradite Cazes at the time of his death.

Comments

Rule 1. Don't attract attention.

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Thai authorities said they'd seized four Lamborghini cars and three upmarket residences with a combined value of $11.7m (400 million Thai Baht). US authorities had apparently been seeking to extradite Cazes at the time of his death.

This guy could have lead a very comfortable life bouncing around the globe traveling, occasionally logging in to make sure things were running smoothly and shifting money out.

Re:Rule 1. Don't attract attention.

[Dunbal]

Did his house in Thailand say "AlphaBay Founder". They found HIM then they figured out where to get him. No one issued a warrant for "the person or persons living at IP XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX". So if they know who to arrest, it's not hard to put the flag to stop him at the border of any cooperating country.

Re:Rule 1. Don't attract attention.

[gweihir]

Indeed. It is a criminal "best practice" to stay under the radar. As is usual in these cases, he will be replaced by more careful operators within no time. Meanwhile, the utterly senseless "War on Drugs" (really a war on self-determination and what you can do for fun waged by authoritarian scum) will continue without any positive effects, but doing massive damage.

Re: i bought all my phenatyl from narcoking

[Anonymous Coward]

People only get hurt because these drugs are illegal in the first place. Other than second-hand smoke, there is relatively no harm to anyone else in using the drugs other than to the user. If a free country, you are supposed to be free unless someone else gets harmed by what you are doing.

Please don't respond to this by saying drugs create crime. Anything if value creates crime, like iPhones. There would be less crime if there weren't $750 phones sitting in everyone's pocket.

I'm not a drug user, and I'm not anti-law enforcement. But how many lives have been ruined by the war on drugs because saidnlife wanted to try something different or new, and we threw them in jail for it? If someone wants to harm themselves for a feeling (I'm look at you, smokers), then by all means, go ahead.

Imagine how rich drug kingpins and rackets are, and how much tax money we lose out on, and how much value gets exported when we import illegal drugs because there are no local suppliers? Every aspect of these drug laws sucks.