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Bitcoin Transactions Lead To Arrest of Major Drug Dealer (techspot.com)
"Drug dealer caught because of BitCoin usage," writes Slashdot reader DogDude. TechSpot reports:
38-year-old French national Gal Vallerius stands accused of acting as an administrator, senior moderator, and vendor for dark web marketplace Dream Market, where visitors can purchase anything from heroin to stolen financial data. Upon arriving at Atlanta international airport on August 31, Vallerius was arrested and his laptop searched. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents allegedly discovered $500,000 of Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash on the computer, as well a Tor installation and a PGP encryption key for someone called OxyMonster...
In addition to his role with the site, agents had identified OxyMonster as a major seller of Oxycontin and crystal meth. "OxyMonster's vendor profile featured listings for Schedule II controlled substances Oxycontin and Ritalin," testified DEA agent Austin Love. "His profile listed 60 prior sales and five-star reviews from buyers. In addition, his profile stated that he ships from France to anywhere in Europe." Investigators discovered OxyMonster's real identity by tracing outgoing Bitcoin transactions from his tip jar to wallets registered to Vallerius. Agents then checked his Twitter and Instagram accounts, where they found many writing similarities, including regular use of quotation marks, double exclamation marks, and the word "cheers," as well as intermittent French posts. The evidence led to a warrant being issued for Vallerius' arrest.
U.S. investigators had been monitoring the site for nearly two years, but got their break when Vallerius flew to the U.S. for a beard-growing competition in Austin, Texas. He now faces a life sentence for conspiracy to distribute controlled substances.
In addition to his role with the site, agents had identified OxyMonster as a major seller of Oxycontin and crystal meth. "OxyMonster's vendor profile featured listings for Schedule II controlled substances Oxycontin and Ritalin," testified DEA agent Austin Love. "His profile listed 60 prior sales and five-star reviews from buyers. In addition, his profile stated that he ships from France to anywhere in Europe." Investigators discovered OxyMonster's real identity by tracing outgoing Bitcoin transactions from his tip jar to wallets registered to Vallerius. Agents then checked his Twitter and Instagram accounts, where they found many writing similarities, including regular use of quotation marks, double exclamation marks, and the word "cheers," as well as intermittent French posts. The evidence led to a warrant being issued for Vallerius' arrest.
U.S. investigators had been monitoring the site for nearly two years, but got their break when Vallerius flew to the U.S. for a beard-growing competition in Austin, Texas. He now faces a life sentence for conspiracy to distribute controlled substances.
Surely the War On Drugs has been won now right??? Or we're at least really close??
What, no?? But how can that be! All other drug dealers must have seen the life sentence and were immediately deterred, no?
Look, drugs like oxycodone/heroin/opiates and cocaine are extremely dangerous and can have devastating consequences when they're abused. Nobody is denying that. But they can't be forcibly eradicated. Given that, drug policy should seek to *minimize* the harm these drugs cause; but prohibition instead *maximizes* it.
To repeat what I said last time this came up,
The real problem is our inability accept facts and logic. Eliminating drug abuse by forcefully stopping it wasn't an entirely unreasonable thing to try, especially back then when the issue wasn't well studied. But it's 100 years now since the first drug prohibition, and >40 of the modern War on Drugs. It has been demonstrated beyond any doubt that no matter how harsh the penalties, even the death penalty for drugs some countries have, prohibition does not work. Anybody can get any drug they want, even in maximum security prisons. Our 4th Amendment rights are nearly dead largely because of this. Loads of other rights are seriously damaged. Police becoming heavily armed soldiers with us as the enemy are a consequence of this. You might be able to justify all that, and the millions upon millions of lives ruined, and the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars spent, if it was eliminating or seriously reducing the harm drugs cause to society... but it unequivocally is not.
Drugs like cocaine, heroin, and meth have horrific consequences when they're abused; to the user, to their family, and to society. Since eliminating them is absolutely never gonna happen, we should instead pick the policy that minimizes the harm caused. Most people are simply incapable of accepting that criminal prohibition instead takes these very harmful substances, and increases their harm by orders of magnitude, and strips everyone of their civil rights.
If you want to:
-Minimize the number of addicts,
-Minimize the number of ODs,
-Minimize acquisitive crime (property crime to raise money),
-Minimize violent crimes,
-Maximize opportunities for people with abuse issues to get help,
Then you have to provide tightly regulated, but legal, access, to all drugs. There's been extensive studies on this, it's not some random idea, it's a thoroughly studied and validated fact. Use does not increase. Portugal decriminalized all drugs for personal use; use went down. Turns out there's not loads of people saying 'gee, I sure wish heroin wasn't illegal, I'd try it otherwise'; something compounded by the fact the people most likely to develop an abuse issue are the least likely to be deterred by legality. All of the money currently spent on prohibition would instead go to education, prevention, and treatment- every dollar spent on that reduces drug abuse more than a dollar spent on prohibition. The money taken away from violent criminal organizations would completely cripple them. There'd be more cooperation with police who weren't constantly breaking down doors and shooting dogs, or sexually assaulting people on the side of the road with cavity searches (seriously, google roadside cavity search). There'd be less harassment when police couldn't bump their numbers with petty drug crimes.
It's a hard fact to swallow, because you see the damage drugs can do, and desperately want that to never happen. But since that's impossible, you have to instead mitigate. However bad you think a given drug is, prohibition makes it worse. Whenever you say "Well, $x shouldn't be illegal because $y", $y is made worse, not better, by keeping it illegal.
Additionally, Portugal has gone farther down this route than any other country, decriminalizing even cocaine and heroin for personal use. The result? The number of addicts plummeted, and remains far below the rest of Europe. Violent crime went down. Drug usage didn't go up. The NYTimes just covered this.
This is why more and more darknet marketplaces are accepting Monero. It's like having a mixer built in to the protocol itself. And to make things even better, the Monero blockchain is itself encrypted. Unless you are one of the participants in a transaction, you can't see what address the coins were sent from, who they were sent to, or how much was sent. And they are in the process of integrating with i2p for even better anonymity.
Disclaimer: I hold quite a bit of Monero. But that's because I honestly think it's the best and fastest-growing "privacy cryptocurrency"
Part of the Second American Revolution!
If Vallerius is guilty of the charges being made against him, then I have absolutely no problem with due legal process being used to hand down the appropriate due punishment.
However, reading the OP, a question regarding jurisdiction springs to mind. The extract quotes a DEA agent, who says (of Vallerius), "His profile listed 60 prior sales and five-star reviews from buyers. In addition, his profile stated that he ships from France to anywhere in Europe."
I ask this question because I am trying to understand how the Unites States Government believes that it has standing to prosecute in this case? The only logical answer to that question that I can see would be if the transactions conducted on the darknet actually took place on US soil - but even that seems to me to be somewhat of a vague area of international law.
Perhaps another reader can clarify this point for me: if we have three directly involved parties [a buyer, a seller and the platform-running middle-man] in a transaction, plus perhaps the network connections between them, then how would an international court of law decide the location and/or terms under which a case could be brought? Is it the law of the land for the buyer, the seller or the middleman? Does the fact that any identifiable part of an illegal transaction takes place within a nation's jurisdiction give that nation the right to prosecute a case?
I will re-iterate what I said at the beginning of this post: I have no sympathy for anyone involved in selling drugs. But in order for society at large to respect the law, we need to trust the law. We need to see that the law is applied transparently, consistently and fairly. We need to understand both the powers and the limits of the law. Without these things, then as individuals within that society, we are at risk from all sorts of different types of corruption and injustice.
Very interested to know if anyone can clarify this...
Alcohol.
sadly it isn't possible to just let people be as many of the drugs being taken affect MANY others when those people take them, sometimes in life threatening ways.
But that's what's happening now. They *are* taking those drugs, they *are* hurting other people. Prohibition isn't stopping them. And the evidence is clear, taking the money spent on prohibition and instead spending it on education, prevention, and treatment, and not saddling abusers with a criminal record and unemployment, giving them little to lose, and forcing them to spend all their time in a violent black market, will result in *fewer* instances of them 'beat, stab, assault anyone they see with incredible rage'. Prohibition creates the most instances of that happening.