Pubdate: Wed, 03 Feb 2016
Source: Brunswickan, The (Edu CN NK)
Copyright: 2016 The Brunswickan
Contact:  http://www.thebruns.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/773
Note: Accepts LTEs from UNB students only!
Author: Sean McCullum

DRUGS FROM THE DARK WEB

The box came from Amsterdam.

Casey Stone (pseudonym) and his three friends had waited weeks for 
the package to arrive. Finally, a Canada Post worker dropped off a 
brown box. It was addressed to one of Stone's friends and had just 
been flown in from the Dutch capital.

Inside the box was a smaller box from a tea company. On top of it sat 
a letter from the tea company thanking the new customers for their 
patronage. They opened the box and pulled out a tea bag. Inside the 
bag was three grams of 3.4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine, also known as Molly.

Stone and his friends were able to successfully order Molly through 
the dark web. Not once, but more times than Stone can remember.

January of 2015 was when Stone and his friends first decided to try 
to order drugs online. Stone, a UNB student, looked into the process 
and discovered it to be surprisingly simple.

"We downloaded a thing called a tor browser," said Stone. "It's like 
a regular browser except people can't trace it."

The tor browser is like a sketchy, secretive Google Chrome. There are 
certain encrypted URLs that can take a user to, what Stone describes 
as "eBay for drugs."

The four friends found a site called Evolution Marketplace. They made 
an account, bought some bitcoins and they were free to explore the 
online drug marketplace.

"You have different vendors online and you can search what you want 
to buy," said Stone. "You can buy fully-automatic weapons, police 
issued Berettas, ak-47s. You can hire assassins, you can buy lifelong 
Netflix memberships, people's credit card information, prostitutes 
and you can hire people to help you disappear."

Stone said the site was oddly user friendly. He was even refunded 
once for a shipment that didn't show up.

"You want to buy three hits of acid. You go over the acid and there 
will be a bunch of reviews. Five star reviews or four star reviews."

It's similar to Yelp or TripAdvisor except people are rating drugs 
rather than restaurants or hotels. In order to give a vendor a 
review, a customer has to purchase their products. In that sense, the 
review system on Evolution Marketplace is more accurate than Yelp or 
TripAdvisor.

Stone and his friends ordered DMT, Xanax, heroin, dilaudid, morphine, 
hydrocodone and Viagra. They could have ordered a lot more. Pretty 
much anything imaginable.

For the most part, they ordered MDMA.

In March of 2015 the marketplace shut down, taking with it $12 
million worth in customers' bitcoins. Stone and the other three lost 
only $30 dollars' worth. Other users lost tens of thousands and some 
last more in the Evolution Marketplace exit scam.

The four men found a different website and continued to place orders, 
which always arrived in different packages including one where the 
drugs were hidden in model airplane parts.

"MDMA a party drug so it's easier to sell in a university town," said Stone.

He soon found out that the MDMA business could be very profitable. At 
the height of his dealing, around Sept, 2015, Stone's friend was 
raking in around $450 profit per week. With the small time commitment 
required to sell around five grams of MDMA, the gig fit a student's 
busy schedule quite well.

Stone said their MDMA was selling faster than they could order it in. 
The dark web offered them significantly lower prices for Molly when 
compared to the street value.

Street Molly in Fredericton runs between $80 and $100 dollars per 
gram. The dark web stuff was $30 to $50 per gram. Profit margins were 
pretty large.

"I'm certain that at that point we had the best stuff in 
Fredericton," said Stone smiling after realising that he sounded like 
the stereotypical drug dealer.

"Before we started using the dark web, we were buying Molly off the 
streets," said Stone. "We would be doing it and one hit of Molly 
would feel different from another hit. We thought, 'there are 
definitely other things in here.'"

Stone said that in Fredericton, almost every dealer he met promised 
that their MDMA was pure and "the best stuff." After a few bad 
experiences and one night where Stone swears he was sold Meth instead 
of MDMA, the four men bought a marquis test kit. The kit is used to 
test the purity of MDMA and other substances.

A liquid is placed in a vial with a drug. After a quick shake, the 
colour of the solution changes to show the substance's purity. Pure 
MDMA should appear black. Lower end stuff should be purple.

"If Molly turns yellow it means it's research chemicals or Speed or 
whatever. Just something you don't want in your body," said Stone. 
"Everything we've tested in Fredericton this year has not been Molly."

Most of the substances that Stone has tested in the city have been 
research chemicals. Stone says that these substances are chemical 
compositions created to mimic the effects of MDMA. Though MDMA has 
not received extensive clinical trial, research chemicals are 
different almost every time and have often not been researched by 
medical professionals.

"Drugs are bad but it would be nice to know what you are getting," 
said Stone. "That's the best thing about the dark web. You know what 
you are getting and you can trust these vendors if there's five-star 
ratings ... We tested the stuff from the dark web and it was 100 per cent pure"

Things were going great for the four friends in October of 2015.

"One of us wanted to make the extra cash but for the rest of us it 
was just a fun experience," said Stone. "He started ordering five 
grams a week and I was helping him sell it."

That's when a few shipments went missing.

In November, the friends found a different package at the door. This 
time it wasn't from a tea company or model plane manufacturer. It was 
from the Government of Canada.

"We looked at each other and were like 'no friggin' way. We've been 
doing this for a year and it took them this long.'"

Inside the package there were three letters. All of them were 
addressed to Stone's friend who had been making the orders.

"Hey got the three different letters form the government saying 
'We've intercepted a package en route to your address containing meth 
amphetamines.' We just stopped doing it," said Stone.

"Every now and then we buy some off the street but it's usually test 
chemicals. We have like half a gram of research chemicals just laying 
around in my friend's room because what are we going to do with it, 
we're not going to sell it, that's mad mojo."

Stone is everything that a drug dealer should be. He doesn't sell to 
drunk people, he tests his products and he offers safety tips to 
folks who try to buy from him. "I basically try to be the warning 
label," said Stone.

He is an online-drug evangelist. Stone believes the internet and the 
dark web has helped create a community of drug users who share 
information and advice.

"MDMA isn't good for you but it's better than these research 
chemicals which are around Fredericton, Moncton and probably Saint 
John," said Stone. "You have to be safe but people don't take time to 
test their shit."

Stone and his friends are rare. Gentlemen drug dealers. They did 
drugs, they sold drugs and they were diligent.

"We were doing everything we could to make sure people don't get 
harmed and that we don't get harmed," said Stone. "A lot of people 
want to make a quick buck from dealing but for us, we were treating 
people the way we wanted to be treated. I don't want to buy test 
chemicals and neither does anyone else."

Stone believes that he and his friends are probably still on a 
watchlist somewhere. They haven't ordered anything from the dark web 
since receiving letters from the Government of Canada.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom