poledriver
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
- Messages
- 11,543
What Happens if You're Caught Getting Drugs in the Mail?
Imagine this scenario: you've bought yourself a ten-pack of pills from a vendor on a dark net. But instead of getting a bargain bag of Dutch MDMA delivered by the postman, you get a visit from the police. If you're one of the rising number of Australians—according to the Global Drug Survey—who have bought drugs on the dark net in the past year, this is probably your worst nightmare.
On the face of it, ordering drugs off the dark net is a lot safer than buying in person, both for your health and your criminal record. Most dark net markets have user feedback rankings just like Amazon, which encourage reputable vendors to ensure their wares are (usually) a lot better quality than what you'd buy off some dude in a club. And the anonymity provided by the TOR browser and PGP encryption means your online movements are a lot harder to crack than barely-coded back and forth text messages.
But even so, sometimes that bag of pingers you bought with Bitcoin doesn't turn up at your front door. Sometimes it will get stopped at Customs. So are you going to get hauled away by the cops, or is it just not worth it for the already clearly busy Border Protection forces?
Brisbane nurse Peter Nash knows first hand what happens when the authorities find out you've been dealing with a dark net market. He was a moderator on the Silk Road discussion forums, which were associated with but separate from the original Silk Road.
When the main site was taken down by the FBI in late 2013, Peter was caught up in an international sweep of site administrators, and extradited to the US where he served 17 months in a US prison awaiting trial on conspiracy and money laundering charges. Despite the fact he was never involved in actually selling any drugs. Luckily for Peter he was eventually released with time served.
Peter told me that during his time as a forum moderator on Silk Road "there were often panicked posts from people who had been contacted or raided by the police following a shipment going missing." Most of the time, though, he assumed prosecutions rarely resulted from interceptions of small quantities.
"Sometimes people would get called in for a 'chat' with the police; however, the impression I was given from what I read on the forums was that in most situations the police were not that interested in pursuing matters that rigorously," he said. "The few Australian cases where people have been successfully prosecuted for ordering drugs from dark net markets, they've mostly been busted due to their activities in the real world and not their online activities."
In a handful of odd cases where people were caught, Peter said they'd just ignore letters from the court and keep on ordering stuff to their home address, pretending as though nothing was wrong.
CONT -
http://www.vice.com/en_au/read/what-happens-if-youre-caught-receiving-drugs-in-the-mail
Imagine this scenario: you've bought yourself a ten-pack of pills from a vendor on a dark net. But instead of getting a bargain bag of Dutch MDMA delivered by the postman, you get a visit from the police. If you're one of the rising number of Australians—according to the Global Drug Survey—who have bought drugs on the dark net in the past year, this is probably your worst nightmare.
On the face of it, ordering drugs off the dark net is a lot safer than buying in person, both for your health and your criminal record. Most dark net markets have user feedback rankings just like Amazon, which encourage reputable vendors to ensure their wares are (usually) a lot better quality than what you'd buy off some dude in a club. And the anonymity provided by the TOR browser and PGP encryption means your online movements are a lot harder to crack than barely-coded back and forth text messages.
But even so, sometimes that bag of pingers you bought with Bitcoin doesn't turn up at your front door. Sometimes it will get stopped at Customs. So are you going to get hauled away by the cops, or is it just not worth it for the already clearly busy Border Protection forces?
Brisbane nurse Peter Nash knows first hand what happens when the authorities find out you've been dealing with a dark net market. He was a moderator on the Silk Road discussion forums, which were associated with but separate from the original Silk Road.
When the main site was taken down by the FBI in late 2013, Peter was caught up in an international sweep of site administrators, and extradited to the US where he served 17 months in a US prison awaiting trial on conspiracy and money laundering charges. Despite the fact he was never involved in actually selling any drugs. Luckily for Peter he was eventually released with time served.
Peter told me that during his time as a forum moderator on Silk Road "there were often panicked posts from people who had been contacted or raided by the police following a shipment going missing." Most of the time, though, he assumed prosecutions rarely resulted from interceptions of small quantities.
"Sometimes people would get called in for a 'chat' with the police; however, the impression I was given from what I read on the forums was that in most situations the police were not that interested in pursuing matters that rigorously," he said. "The few Australian cases where people have been successfully prosecuted for ordering drugs from dark net markets, they've mostly been busted due to their activities in the real world and not their online activities."
In a handful of odd cases where people were caught, Peter said they'd just ignore letters from the court and keep on ordering stuff to their home address, pretending as though nothing was wrong.
CONT -
http://www.vice.com/en_au/read/what-happens-if-youre-caught-receiving-drugs-in-the-mail
