Last Wednesday, June 27, the U.S. Department of justice announced dozens of arrests of dealers who conduct their activities in darkwave. Investigators from the Bureau of investigation immigration and customs enforcement national security Agency, the United States managed to identify the people allegedly selling drugs in darkwave, and open more than 90 of cases. The Deputy General Prosecutor Rod Rosenstein said:
Criminals who believe that in the darknet they are safe, wrong. We can find them online, and we are determined to bring them to justice.
Various law enforcement agencies in the US have arrested more than 35 suspected dealers who sold cocaine, marijuana, LSD and other drugs. Several of the arrested accused in the arms trade.
Interesting in this activity was the method used to identify suspects. Nicholas weaver, senior researcher, International Institute of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, said that there are many ways to sell drugs in darkwave for the cryptocurrency, while dealers of much less channels to get cash.
The conversion of large amounts of cryptocurrencies (usually talking about bitcoins) Fiat is one of the biggest problems faced by major dealers in darkwave. After they transfer their bitcoins on the trading floor to cash, law enforcement can track their movement in the blockchain and visit the exchange to obtain data about the customer’s account. They can also directly communicate with the alleged perpetrators at the time of transfer. Weaver says:
The drug dealers need to avoid major exchanges. This means that they can only rely on “entrepreneurs” with LocalBitcoins and similar services.
According to the indictment in the address of the 32-year-old Nicholas Powell, one of the mentioned in the statement of the Ministry of justice in October 2016, investigators arrested a trader cryptocurrency. In collaboration with the individual, the authorities began to examine his clients, appropriating his account. Then, in January 2017, they began to advertise their services on the number of resources in darkwave:
Since the original business model of the Subject-1 [merchant cryptocurrency] included sending money to addresses of individuals, each transaction provided the agents the identity and location of counterparties.
In a statement, the Ministry also said that darknet is constantly changing and becoming more complicated, which complicates the search and catch people who sell illegal products. But in this case, the agents were able to “infiltrate the environment of those who live in this world of cyber crime, to locate persons who sell drugs with a view to profit”.
Recall that recently Greg Nevano, an employee of the Department of investigation the Immigration and customs police of the USA, said that various law enforcement agencies of States this year have seized more than $25 million in bitcoin. For comparison, last year there were only confiscated $7 million.
According to the materials of the Motherboard
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