Darknet Diaries - 81: The Vendor

Episode Date: December 22, 2020

This is the story of a darknet marketplace vendor we’ll name V. V tells his story of how he first became a buyer, then transitioned into seller.This episode talks about drugs. Listener discretion is advised.If you want to contact V his email is at https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/81.SponsorsSupport for this show comes from IT Pro TV. Get 65 hours of free training by visiting ITPro.tv/darknet. And use promo code DARKNET25.Support for this show comes from Linode. Linode supplies you with virtual servers. Visit linode.com/darknet and get a special offer.

Alright, so I need to start this episode by giving a clear warning. This episode is going to get deep into drugs and overall is adult-themed, so you may want to wait until the little ones go to sleep before tuning into this one. You ever think about how many of us got through high school by just the skin of our teeth? We're just so young, naive, fearless, and feel like we know it all. With an attitude like that, we're bound to make some kind of grave mistake in our teenage years. And many of us do. We crash our parents' car, try drugs, cigarettes, alcohol. We skip school, hang out with the wrong kids, steal,

cheat, get pregnant, or expelled. These are all common stories that every high school principal has heard all too often. Now, some kids try something bad, and they get caught, and they get in trouble, and they decide not to do that again. But other kids try something bad, and they get away with it. It's all upside for them. They don't experience any negative consequences. So they try it again, and again, and again, and before you know it, they're habitually doing something wrong, which can send a teenager on a trajectory that can take a decade to recover from. This is actually a story about the darknet. How about that? It's a story about how a darknet

market drug dealer got started, rose to power, and how it all came crashing down. These are true stories from the dark side of the internet. I'm Jack Recider. This is Darknet Diaries. This episode is sponsored by Delete Me. I know a bit too much about how scam callers work. They'll use anything they can find about you online to try to get at your money. And our personal information is all over the place online. Phone numbers, addresses, family members, where you work, what kind of car you drive. It's endless and it's not a fair fight. But I realize I don't need to be fighting this alone anymore. Now I use the help of Delete.me. Delete.me is a subscription service that finds and removes personal information from hundreds of data brokers' websites and continuously works to keep it off. Data brokers hate them because DeleteMe makes sure your personal profile is no longer theirs to sell.

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at checkout. That's join delete me.com slash darknet diaries. Use code darknet. Support for this show comes from Black Hills Information Security. This is a company that does penetration testing, incident response and active monitoring to help keep businesses secure. I know a few people who work over there, and I can vouch they do very good work. If you want to improve the security of your organization, give them a call. I'm sure they can help. But the founder of the company, John Strand, is a teacher, and he's made it a mission to make BlackHills Information Security world-class in security training. You can learn things like penetration testing, securing the cloud, breaching the cloud, digital forensics,

and so much more. But get this, the whole thing is pay what you can. Black Hills believes that great intro security classes do not need to be expensive, and they are trying to break down barriers to get more people into the security field. And if you decide to pay over $195, you get six months access to the MetaCTF Cyber Range, which is great for practicing your skills and showing them off to potential employers. Head on over to BlackHillsInfosec.com to learn more about what services they offer and find links to their webcasts to get some world-class training. That's BlackHillsInfosec.com. BlackHillsInfosec.com. I don't know if you want to go nameless in this

or you want me to use a fake name or what do you want to do? Yeah, I think you can just use a fake name. If it's easier to call me by a letter in the alphabet, you can do that. Okay, so let's pick a letter then. Um, V. This is V. V doesn't want to reveal his real name and that sort of thing, but I want you to know, the listener, that I have fact-checked V's story

by looking through public records using his real name, and I saw screenshots and documents which confirmed as much of the story as I could. So V's story starts in high school and while there he was hanging out with some questionable kids. Like can you describe the people a little bit? Are they skateboard punks? Yes skaters. Kids who were just kind of, you know, burnouts. Did you skate? I did not skate. No, I so I was probably the most like unathletic person you could imagine. Like I lift weights and stuff like that. But outside of that, like, I never played a sport. You know, I was the music kind of kid. And I was in school. in school, I was, I was part of that, you know, cool kid crew,

but not, not immediately. You know, I was homeschooled for a good portion of my life. So like my, my social skills did not really creep in until like much later. But once they did, yeah, I mean, I was, I was, you know, a popular kid, but I was also like a music kid. I wasn't a sports jock or anything like that. It was just, it was different for me. V grew up in an upper middle class family. That's not to say the family didn't have money troubles, but it does mean he never went hungry. He always had clothes, a safe place to live. He could visit a doctor anytime he needed, and he was attending a private school. His parents got him into learning musical instruments when he was young, and he kept playing them all the way through high school. But his friends he was hanging out with in high school, they weren't the best influence. Weren't really about school or wanted to do other things,

not looked at with the utmost respect. Yeah, I laugh at skateboard punk because I was a skateboard punk in high school. Yeah. Well, there were quite a few of those. Um, and a lot of those guys were, you know, selling weed and stuff like that. So I kind of fell in with that crew. Um, I started smoking weed actually before I drank, uh, when I was like 17, uh, 16, 17. Um, and then from that point, I I've always had like a business oriented mind. I was like, well, I can easily smoke for free if I buy more weed and sell it at a higher price. So that's what I started to do. And one of those burnouts that I was talking about showed me the original Silk Road. And my mind was blown. And I think I ended up this was around when

Bitcoin was trading at maybe like 30 or 40 bucks. So it was like, I got to the point where, you know, I would just pick up, you know, like some exotic, you know, eighths of weed or whatever. And eventually like kind of up my quantity. Yeah. So you were buying on Silk Road? Was that your main supplier as a high schooler? When I was a teenager, I was buying on the Silk Road. I didn't have any money at the time. So I would actually have people front me. Like it got to the point where this kid that I knew that was one of those skater punks that I talked about earlier would give me money to buy him a pound. I didn't tell him where it was coming from, but I said, hey, like, you know, I have somebody that can ship to me from, you know, California

or whatever. And he was like, OK, like the stuff you've been getting me has been really good. So let's do that. And I was like, OK. He wasn't very good at staying private back then. He didn't know how to do it, really. At 16, 17, you don't know all the tricks on how to hide from the feds. I remember the first time I used it, I was like, hey, do you like I remember private messaging with some vendors. And I was like, you guys take PayPal, you know, just being like, you know, laughed away. Like, get the hell out of here, man. I learned a lot through the dark nets about Bitcoin and PGP and, you know, cybersecurity.

And of course, he didn't want to send packages to his home address. That would raise suspicion maybe with his parents. So he sent packages to another address. He actually had another family member who he could ship stuff there and they would accept packages in exchange for some cash. But yeah, that was a pretty good summer for me, especially, you know, just being 18 and just heading off to school. You know, I had a pretty good nest egg getting started. So that was V's senior year in high school and the summer after that. And then he was looking at what colleges to go to. The state college where he lived looked pretty good, so he applied there and got accepted with a music scholarship. So off to college he went. He moved to the town where the university was

and got a roommate and was attending classes. I was in college for music, and I was also, at the time, I was a pre-med major. My first year, because I had a music scholarship, so I had to major in music in order to keep that scholarship. But while there, he learned quickly what kind of drugs the college kids were interested in. Eventually, once I got to college, at some point in college, Silk Road went down. Oh, so I should quickly explain what a darknet marketplace is.

I think you understand already it's just a place to buy and sell illegal drugs online. But these places aren't on the regular internet. It's on kind of a secret version of the internet called Tor. And what's so special about Tor is that that protocol is anonymous by default. Once you connect to Tor, your IP address gets hidden, so nobody can track where you're connecting from. It doesn't quite make you anonymous, because if you get on Tor and then tell people your real name and address,

you unveiled yourself. But it does help you stay anonymous if that's what you want to be. And online drug dealers typically want to be anonymous. But I should clarify something here. Buying illegal drugs online is, well, illegal. Just like buying them on the streets. So the feds are actively trying to find who's running these darknet marketplaces and working towards shutting them down. According to the FBI, Silk Road emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the internet at the time. A darknet marketplace typically sells illegal stuff,

drugs and other illegal things like weapons and fake driver's license. The FBI took down Silk Road and arrested its owner on October 2013. When that happened, users of the site flocked to other marketplaces. And V here just moved to Agora, another darknet market. Now, by this point, he learned that the people in his college were mostly interested in a different drug other than weed. He doesn't want to say what kind of drug, but he was buying them on the Agora marketplace and selling them on campus.

To the fraternities, to anyone who would really buy in bulk from me, they were pills, so it was in pill form. So I would be selling, you know, you know, basically K-Paks, which are just, you know, a thousand, a thousand pills to whoever wanted them. And I would be getting 10 to 20,000 of those from the dark net. Now, he was staying in an apartment on campus with a roommate, but he knew not to send these drugs to his own apartment. like, hey, this package is coming. Don't worry about what's in it, but I'm going to pay you for your services, and I'm going to continue to use you every week. So these guys were bringing in anywhere from $150 to $300 a week, which is some nice extra pocket change when you're in college. That's some extra pizza nights or whatever. I never shipped to my own address at that point

because I just knew so many people that were willing to let me use their address. It sounds clever, but do you think it was actually effective? Because let's say the feds go to their friend's apartment and say, all right, you know, we know there's some drugs that got shipped here. What's the deal? Don't you think they'll say, oh, yeah, it's this guy's stuff. It's not mine. Yeah, there's always that risk, right? So there's always that risk that somebody is going to tell on you.

But there's only so much you can really do i mean besides me you know like uh starting a shipping business in a warehouse you know it's it's there's not really anything you can do to ship large quantities except to like really kind of trust your circle um but there's always that risk that somebody's gonna flip so eventually I had sold to a roommate because I got greedy. And he was an idiot and sold to an undercover officer. They had done three controlled buys with him. And one of the controlled buys was in a car. One of the controlled buys was in his room in the apartment.

These undercover officers had collected enough evidence to get a search warrant for V's apartment to look for drugs that his roommate was selling. They didn't know I existed. And eventually one day I was in my apartment and my room, there was a knock on the door. My roommate answered the front door. I was in my room, my separate bedroom. And my roommate answered the door. And I heard some cops say like, hey, is there anyone else in the apartment? And I freaked out because I had five or 6,000 pills in my room. Actually, it was a little more than that. And I was trying to stuff them all into my safe. And they were at my door, like open the door, open the door. And I was trying to stuff them all into my safe. And they were at my door, like, open the door, open the door. And I was like, I'm getting dressed.

I'm getting dressed. And they burst into the room once I opened it and basically found all my pills. And I was arrested. I wasn't even on the warrant. What's that feeling like with the feds banging on the door? Like, is your heart... Those weren't feds. That was a state case. Yeah.

That feeling was not good. That was... It's the same feeling every time. You know, it's just a feeling of, you know, non-belief, really. It's just your stomach sinks as low as it can go, and you're like, holy shit, like my worst nightmare is happening. All his stuff got confiscated. He went down to the police station and got booked, but was able to make bail pretty quick.

So he got out of jail and was facing felony charges for this. Yeah, it was a felony possession with intent to distribute. And I didn't think the school would find out. My lawyer told me the school probably wouldn't find out. Turns out they, they did. So I was referred to a student conduct office and they were like, Hey, like, we're going to let you finish out your semester, but, uh, you're going to be, um, you're going to be suspended for the next year. Uh, I thought I was going to get kicked out. So that was really good news to me. Um, but, uh, yeah, so the next year, I kind of was just kind of spent laying around, not doing much. Now, at this point in the story, it could go in a lot of directions, right? And I'm always

fascinated by why we choose what we choose to do. V here could wait another year and go back to school again and try to finish up his pre-med. Or he could try switching school so he doesn't have to wait at all. He could possibly get a good paying job and not worry about school at all anymore. He was 21 at this time and he was still waiting for a sentence and everything from his rest. And maybe you've been in a similar situation where when you're young, you tried real hard to accomplish something great like pre-med school, but it just failed big time. And it took all the wind out of your sails. And you felt like, well, crap, now what do I do with my life? And on top of it all, he needed some cash to get by. So he had to figure out something quick.

I was financially driven at that point because like I said, I had already been charged. I was kind of pending a judgment on that case. And I was like, look, I basically told myself I'm expelled from school. I am not going to be able to get a job. I have a charge on my record that's pretty serious. I don't want a bad gross freeze for $10 an hour. So he decides to get back into drug dealing on the dark web. But this time, he wanted to be a vendor. Because he was buying drugs on darknet marketplaces and selling them locally, but now he wants to get drugs locally and sell them on the darknet markets. This way, he only has to interact in person with the one supplier who he trusts, and not a lot of individual buyers.

I want to do this. I think it's the most, I think this is the way that I can mitigate risk the most while making like the most money. It was a no-brainer for me. Well, isn't the being arrested for this exact same thing supposed to deter you from this? And here it did the opposite. Yeah, but it was deterring me. The only reason that I got caught in that situation was because I did an in-person sale. You know what I mean? If what I'm talking about is like, it's way easier for me to not get caught if I'm doing anonymous sales on the dark web, like no one's going to know who I am. You know, I'm, I'm shipping out from a, from a, from a return address that doesn't exist, you know, and it's not even me really doing the shipping. Um, but yeah, the justice system is supposed to work in that, like when you get

arrested, like you're supposed to be, uh, rehabilitated and like not do that again. Um, but like I said, I hadn't really been punished yet. I was, I was, I had made bail and I was just kind of out and like doing my thing. Um, so, so this is almost immediately after being arrested. Well, it was before your sentencing at least. So it was like within a few months. So I was pending, I was pending on that sentence on that, on that case for a long time because I actually, um, my lawyer had actually gotten the case thrown out and then, uh, the state appealed and it was brought back and there was a whole lot of back and forth. So that case was pending for more than actually two years. So it wasn't resolved for literally two years. So basically a year after that, after the initial arrest, like the idea formed in my head to start looking into this. So he's got the idea to be a vendor on these marketplaces.

But the first thing he needs to do is find a supplier. This whole time he had kept in contact with his old buddies from high school who were selling weed back then. Well, this one guy was still selling drugs all these years later. And eventually he got to the point where he was way, way, way bigger than I was. And I kind of would go through him for certain stuff that I needed that I couldn't necessarily get off of the dark web or that would just be more convenient for me to get in person. And eventually, like, his bread and butter became cocaine.

He was getting cocaine from a big supplier who was a few hours away. I kind of knew at that point that there was a market for this stuff on the dark net because the stuff that I had gotten, the cocaine that I had gotten off the dark net was kind of weak. It wasn't great. There was a lot of infighting between vendors at that time. No one kind of really led the pack. I think that there was a vendor that had just either stopped or gotten nabbed or something. And so everyone was kind of in disarray. So it was kind of was able to convince him and say, hey, look, you have a really great product here. I think we can have competitive pricing. I think we have the best quality. And let's rock and roll, man.

Let's get this shit done. And he was, you know, I convinced him and we both got on board together and made it happen. V brings his friend into this, another guy he trusted and who also needed cash too. And the two of them got started working on this. Now, V lived in a different town from where the supplier guy was, but he was trying to find a place to stay nearby to do this business. He's like, are you living here this summer? And I was like, yeah, I'll move down here for the summer. He's like, all right, well, you're going to need a place for you. And you know, you and my, and my friend who was with me, um, I'll just call him Paul. But, uh, so me and

Paul, he was looking around for an apartment for us, for me and Paul. I was like, well, how are you going to get the apartment? Because like, I obviously like, we can't have it in our names. And he's like, I got a guy for it. So he had a guy that would actually find people to sign leases on apartments and then just like not live there. So, and he would pay them a set amount of money to like put them on the lease and it was really cool because you know we were living in this place that wasn't connected to us in any type of way so like if we weren't there and like a raid was conducted or something it's not our shit you know um which was pretty cool so v and paul move into this apartment which wasn't in their name, and they started setting up shop. Now, at this point, V was pretty familiar with the way darknet marketplaces worked and got right to work trying to establish himself as a vendor.

First, he had to do a lot of research to figure out where to set up shop. From my side, from my end, what I did was I, like you said, I did all of the research on the markets that I needed. I did all of the research on the best wallet that we should have. Yeah. So to do business on these darknet markets, you want to be as anonymous as possible. And Bitcoin, of course, is a way to transfer money digitally and anonymously. But if you have a lot of Bitcoin, you want to keep that secure. Keeping in on an exchange has two big risks.

First, the Bitcoin exchange might just go down or get hacked and you could lose all your money. Second, the feds might issue a warrant to that Bitcoin exchange and try to get information on who owns that wallet. So this wasn't an option for him to keep his Bitcoin on an exchange. Instead, he used a cold wallet and sometimes a hardware wallet. Let me go one more level deep. Each Bitcoin wallet has a private key. This is a 64 character string. Whoever has this private key can spend or transfer the Bitcoins in that wallet. So it's very important that you protect this private key at all costs. But people have a really hard time memorizing a 64 character long string. So this is where a seed phrase comes in. A seed

phrase is just a bunch of random words together. Something like witch, collapse, practice, feed, shame, open, despair, creak. Now this seed phrase is what's used to create the private key. So people store these seed phrases on like a piece of paper or in a vault as a last ditch effort for recovering their Bitcoin wallet if their computer gets ruined or something. So if you have the seed phrase, you can generate the private key, and if you have the private key, you can do whatever you want with that Bitcoin wallet. So V had to set all this up.

I also, like, had the seed, like, memorized and all that. I love this because this tells me he's getting really serious about his security and privacy. If he can commit his seed phrase to memory, then he never has to worry about losing his private key or storing it in a place that can get hacked. He can quickly generate the private key whenever he needs, make the transfers, then delete that private key when done.

It's brilliant. Of course, besides this, he's also using hardware wallets. Two common brands are Ledger and Treasure. These are USB devices that store the private key so you can unplug them from your computer and store them in a safe or something. And when you want to use them again, you plug them in, make the transfer, and unplug them. They're also great ways to keep your Bitcoin safe. Okay, so he's got his Bitcoin wallet figured out. Next, after doing a bunch of research, he decided to set up shop on the

Alphabay Darknet marketplace. Now, I did a whole episode on Alphabay called Operation Bayonet. It's episode 24. So check that out if you want a full story on Alphabay. So he starts setting up his account there. Well, there were a lot of things you had to memorize. So I mean, for, you know, once we had the account set up, you know, you want to memorize your username. Obviously, you want to memorize your password and you want to memorize your PGP credentials and all that. I just kind of like had a string of letters that I thought was random. And like it was they were probably like 25 to 30 characters in length each. So like I kind of sat there and like had them on a piece of paper and like memorized them, like said them over and over, you know, like I was studying for a test

really, you know. Now, one reason he wants to memorize all this is because he wants to leave no digital trail of any of this stuff. If some law enforcement officer grabs his computer, he didn't want to just have a page of passwords that were listing all the keys to the kingdom. He knew that if he kept all this stuff in his head only, it would never end up in the hands of someone he doesn't want seeing it. But there's a lot more stuff he had to do to stay anonymous. So I use Tails. Tails is great. I use it all the time too. Tails is a Linux operating system, but it's designed to completely forget

about everything you did when it shuts off. So basically you power up Tails, which has a browser and automatically connects you to Tor and you can do all your work on it. But when you shut it down, it wipes everything you did. There's no record or trail of anything.

There's no browser cache, no password saved, no download saved, nothing. I installed it on a USB. See, that's what's slick about it. You have Tails on a USB drive, and you plug it into your computer, boot to USB, and it boots up into Tails.

And when Tails runs, it runs entirely in memory, in RAM. And remember, RAM doesn't save any data when the computer is shut down, so it just gets flushed out automatically. But now you're starting to see the other benefit to memorizing his passwords, Bitcoin phrase, and PGP keys, because every day when he boots up his computer, he's got to enter all this stuff in again. Okay, this is great, but now we need to set up connectivity to the internet. Surely, you don't want to use an ISP connection,

which is registered to your real name. If any law enforcement gets your IP and traces it back, the ISP can quickly find out it was you who connected. So there's a few options here. You could set up a VPN or you could go to a different coffee shop or library every day because you're going to want to switch it up often so you don't get caught going to the same place every day. But V had a different solution. So we actually had somebody from Comcast. I guess he worked for them, but also had his own side thing going on. So we had routers in the apartment that were in other people's names and stuff. So we didn't really have to leave.

Okay, that's cool. They got a clean, anonymous internet connection that can't be tracked back to them. Sounds great. I didn't use a VPN. From my understanding, like there was no, I didn't see any significant benefit in using a VPN. And it just made all of my shit slower. So I didn't use it. You know, I tried to find like a definitive answer on that. And it was not, there was nothing that was definitive.

There's a debate about this. I'm not entirely sure myself. I would probably err on the side of caution and use a VPN and Tor because a VPN encrypts the traffic while Tor anonymizes it. And they're two slightly different things. And if you connect to Tor, your ISP can detect that you did that, but that's about all they can figure out about you. They just know that you went to the darknet, not which website you went to though. And using a VPN means your ISP no longer knows you went to Tor. But your VPN provider now knows you're on Tor. So it's just a matter of moving that line about who knows you went to Tor. Anyway, another big important part of starting the day was handling PGP. PGP stands for pretty good privacy,

and it's a method for encrypting your communication. You can set up your chat messages on Alphabay to encrypt using PGP. So even if the Fed sees the servers, they couldn't read your messages because they're encrypted with PGP. Now, logging into Alphabay isn't just as simple as putting in your username and password. Username and password password but then you also have to decrypt a message using your pgp authentication so um they would be like they would send you uh you upload your public key to alpha bay i guess and then they're able to they encrypt a message with your key i guess and, and then they're like, decrypt this message or something. And so every morning or every time I logged in, I would have to copy and paste this block, decrypt it. Now, Tails has tools to help you with this. First, he would need to generate

his private PGP key every time he booted up Tails. And he would do this by entering his PGP passphrase into an app on Tails, which would then generate the private key. And remember, he's memorized his PGP passphrase just to make this part easier for him. Then he could copy the encrypted message into some kind of decryption app and he could read the message and pass the challenge. All that just to log into his Alphabay account every day. That's a lot of work. And actually, he would probably do it more than once a day because in order for him to erase all his digital tracks on his computer,

all he needs to do is shut it down and Tails erases everything. So if he was going out of his apartment for a while, he'd probably shut down his computer in case someone got into his apartment while he was gone. But this is what it takes to stay anonymous and secure. Just to recap quickly, in order for him to log in every time, he would need to boot to a fresh operating system, Tails, enter in his PGP passphrase to generate his private PGP key, enter in his Bitcoin passphrase to generate his private Bitcoin key, connect to Tor, find the URL

to Alphabay login, decrypt the PGP challenge, then he's in. Oh, and all the while he's on a clean Wi-Fi connection too. Can you see now why someone might slip up or get lazy and take shortcuts with this? Imagine having to do this every time you came to work. Companies all over the world set up single sign-on to make it easier for employees to log in, but this is the opposite of easy. Anyway, now that he's got his Alphabay account all set up, he's got to apply to be a vendor. So at the time, all you really needed to do was pay money to a wallet that Alphabay gave you. Like you would sign up as a user account, I think, or you would sign up as a new account,

maybe not as a buyer or seller yet. And then they would be like, all right, if you want to apply for seller status, send $500 to this address or whatever. And at that point, once you did that, you were verified as a seller and could start selling. All right. So you might be wondering why he had to send $500 in Bitcoin to Alphabay to be a seller. Well, there's this thing called escrow there. Basically, when you sell something, the buyer pays the money, but it doesn't go to you. It goes to Alpha Bay where it sits and it's held by them. Then Alpha Bay says, okay, look, we got the money. This guy looks legit. Go ahead, send him the cocaine that he bought. So then you send the drugs and wait and wait and wait. And after the buyer gets the drugs and tries it and thinks it's legit and it's good, he goes back to Alphabay and says, okay, I got the drugs and they're all good.

Then Alphabay releases the Bitcoin and sends it to the seller. So if you were just like shipping rocks to somebody, like literal rocks, like they would, you know, the buyer could say, hey, like this guy shipped me fucking rocks, you know, and you don't get your money. So there's an incentive there to like actually like ship product, you know? I hated escrow every, you know, I hated the idea of escrow just from the start because what if the market goes down? What if the market exit scams? What if like, what if a customer says the product is not what it says it is, but I know that it is the product.

You know what I mean? It's just a pain in the ass. And you're dealing with disputes all the time. And so I tried to get to the point where we were generating enough sales that I could apply for finalized early status. Oh, yeah. The finalized early status, or FE, is what every vendor wants. This means you've had enough legit transactions that Alphabase sees you're a trusted vendor and no longer holds your money in escrow. As soon as someone buys from you, you get your Bitcoin right away

and you can ship the product to the person. So he wanted to get to this status as quick as possible. Okay, so he needs to send $500 in Bitcoin to this darknet market. So now he has to actually get some Bitcoin to do that with. I mean, he's starting with an empty wallet. Many Bitcoin exchanges are regulated by the feds. V didn't want to buy a Bitcoin from a place that could send information to the authorities. On top of that, there's a lengthy process of connecting your bank account to an exchange,

transferring your money to it, and then having to wait for your funds to clear before buying Bitcoins with it. It can take a few days sometimes. So he researched it and found a site called LocalBitcoins. Now, I'm not sure exactly how LocalBitcoins works because I've never used it and it seems really weird to me. But from what I understand is that there are users on LocalBitcoins that say, hey, send me some money, give me some cash. And as soon as I get it, I'll turn around and send you Bitcoins for the same amount minus a fee. So there's this whole trust thing now with LocalBitcoin users.

Like, if I give them cash, are they really going to send me Bitcoin? But now you have to figure out how to get people cash. There are a number of options, though. You could send someone a MoneyGram or a Western Union. Or just meet them locally and get people cash. There are a number of options, though. You could send someone a moneygram or a Western Union or just meet them locally and give them cash or send them cash in the mail. V looked at his options and chose the best one for him. Went to local bitcoins and like direct deposited money into somebody's account. When you go to a bank and direct deposit money like that, they don't ask for ID. So I just direct deposited it into the account that was listed and I got the Bitcoin immediately, sent it to my wallet.

I wasn't tumbling at the time, but I sent it to my wallet and then I sent it from my wallet to the Alphabet wallet. There you go. He found a user on the site, deposited cash into their bank account and got the Bitcoin immediately. Crazy, huh? This is a weird way to get Bitcoin because it circumvents the exchange and you're dealing with just another person in the world who wants to sell their Bitcoin, which means it's off the radar of any audits and regulations or databases that you ever bought Bitcoin. It is an anonymous way to buy it. So now he's got all the things ready to start selling. This was a lot of work to get here.

But like any new entrepreneur, getting traction with sales is hard. Stay with us, because after the break, we'll hear some pretty clever marketing tricks he used to get started. This episode is sponsored by SpyCloud. With major breaches and cyber attacks making the news daily, marketing tricks he used to PII. Knowing what's putting you and your organization at risk and what to remediate is critical for protecting you and your users from account takeover, session hijacking, and ransomware. SpyCloud exists to disrupt cybercrime with a mission to end criminals' ability to profit from stolen data. With SpyCloud, a leader in identity threat protection, you're never in the dark about your company's exposure

from third-party breaches, successful phishes, or info-stealer infections. Get your free Darknet exposure report at spycloud.com slash darknetdiaries. The website is spycloud.com slash darknetdiaries. Okay, so imagine you're the new guy at a darknet marketplace. You're posting that you've got cocaine for sale, but literally nobody knows who you are. You have zero sales, zero reviews.

Who's going to buy from you? No one. It was difficult to get off the ground. Um, there was a, there was a forum that I went to a lot, um, where I'm not going to name the actual forum, but it's a forum where buyers from the dark net kind of congregate. And it's kind of like, uh, a group for connoisseurs sort of, they want the best product so there's there's threads for um cocaine there's threads for weed there's threads for pills there's threads for acid etc like who has the best whatever and people post reviews there and also vendors post you know um sales there and uh and advertisements so i was a new you know i was green so i i started posting there

like hey like i'm willing to send out free samples to people blah blah blah and when you send out a free sample or when you offer free samples anyone and their mother's going to come because it's free right so there was a bunch of people i think it was, I think it was a free sample in exchange for a review on this particular forum, um, and this particular thread in the cocaine thread. And so I sent out a bunch of samples. Um, eventually, you know, the packs landed, they got their, they got their product, whatever. And, um, a few, a few reviews started to roll in. I posted some listings. I think the first sale probably came, the first actual sale where we had sold like our first gram of cocaine on Darknet

came about two weeks after the vendor account was formed. After all of the free samples went out and after three or four like pretty positive reviews came out um at that time also reddit's like darknet market subreddit was still up um so people were posting reviews there so i we got a lot of exposure pretty early just due to like my free samples and like the advertisements i was doing just like all of the time. And once, once those free samples landed, once I got, that was when I got my first sale was two weeks after that. And from there it just grew, you know, the next day we probably had two or three that we had to send out. And within a month or two, you know, we went to 10 at the end of the month. This was the start of his online

darknet marketplace selling spree. Every day, he would repeat the same process of wake up, go through the 50 steps to log into Alphabay, check his orders, print out the labels of where things were going, and then get the drugs from his supplier, package them up, and ship them out. And I don't think he put a valid return address on the product because if it got lost in the mail, oh well, he didn't want it coming back to him, that's for sure. So he took great care to try to make the package look as normal as possible so it wouldn't look suspicious to anyone along the way. Oh yeah, so let's talk about packaging. To run a business like this, you need to know a lot about packing and shipping. So when I sent out my stuff, it would be double vacuum sealed. And then Mylar would be used as an extra form of protection for any odors or like whatever.

And then I had a visual barrier on top of that. I was just told always that Mylar is expected and wanted by the buyers. So I just did whatever was like the best that the buyers considered the best opsec. So I just, that's what I always followed. And I had received, when I was still buying, I had always gotten packages that had been Mylart and then there would be a vacuum seal and then another vacuum seal and then your product. So that was why I used Mylar. Do I think it actually had any effect on like,

you know, keeping dogs from sniffing the packages? I have no idea. I don't know. I do know that like, as far as I know, no package has ever been, no package on my end has ever been seized. So I think that we did a pretty good job with that. Okay. So he's getting orders coming in. He's shipping drugs to people, but he still had to wait for people to come back to Alphabet and click that they got the order and it was good in order for him to get paid.

A lot of people don't. And that's the problem. So like, you have an auto finalize on pretty much every market, you can auto finalize your order if you don't like report a problem with it. But it doesn't auto finalize your order for two weeks. So usually when I send out an order, it would get there in two days and so you know if you weren't being a lazy you know piece of shit you could just log in to alpha bay and like release your funds and you know everything is gravy whatever but a lot of people will get their stuff forget to log back in um and it's not even being a piece of shit. It's just like, you know, like people forget. And I'm now stuck kind of, you know, with my thumb up my butt waiting for my money to come through. So cashflow would, could be a problem if you only have escrow,

if you only have escrow enabled. So that's why I try to get FV enabled as quickly as I could. So when you finally got FV enabled, do you remember what that feeling was like? It wasn't like a feeling of accomplishment. It was more like, thank God, because now we can actually start to increase volume here and kind of commit to this. Because before, we had a cash flow problem like we weren't getting our money on time. Now, like money's coming to us first. We have, we can, you know, we can turn over that cash into more cocaine, whatever we need to do with it.

And it was just, it just made it the process pretty much way, way less headaches. Once finalized early was enabled. Okay. Things were going pretty good for V and his buddy and his supplier or higher up. But there's another piece to this puzzle, cashing out of all that Bitcoin. Well, we had to convert because we had to, the product that we were getting was in cash. So the cocaine that we were getting was in cash. So we had to have constant cash flow and cash out. So they needed cash, but you can't just deposit Bitcoin into your bank account. First, banks just don't accept it. And probably at this

time, they didn't even know Bitcoin existed. But second, it might be dirty Bitcoin. I mean, it's coming straight from Alphabet, right? You don't want that going somewhere that can be traced to you. So once again, he goes to local Bitcoins. Socoins. So once we started selling, I had set up a LocalBitcoins account for cash and mail. So basically with LocalBitcoins, you had different options to pay. And at that time, cash and mail was an option. I'm not sure if it still is, but cash and mail was an option. PayPal was an option. Direct deposit was an option. You had an option. Direct deposit was an option.

You had Venmo, you had Zelle. And I set up basically cash and mail and that was it. And I had a really low rate. Okay, you get it, right? This is the opposite of how he bought Bitcoins. But now what he set up is when people send him cash in the mail, as soon as he gets it, he would log into his Bitcoin wallet and transfer the Bitcoin to the person who just bought it. But let's talk about fees. When he was selling bitcoins to people,

he was charging a small fee to make the trade. This was typical for people making trades here. But he was charging a very low fee sometimes, even below market value, because he just wanted the cash, not to profit from this trade. Eventually, though, like, I got disgruntled with that because I got a little paranoid. I was dealing with too many people, and I had to give addresses and stuff like that. And I found a trader who I was doing cash and mail with them. And I had a burner address that I would send the money to and stuff. And they were very consistent.

And eventually I messaged them and I saw where their return address was. And the return address happened to be within an hour of me where I was. And I was like, hey, is there any way we could do something in person? I know that like you probably want your identity secure and everything like that.

And I want mine secure, too. But I have a pretty large volume of Bitcoin and I need to move it weekly, blah, blah, blah. The trader wasn't interested in a physical meetup. That's just too risky. But he kept using them to do cash and mail trades. We're talking $10,000 and $20,000 trades here. Yeah, imagine $20,000 in cash coming through the mail, and then he would turn around and send the Bitcoin for that. Or maybe he'd send the Bitcoin first and get the cash second. Either way, it sounds

risky to me, which is why he got fed up with the process. He did this a few more times with this particular trader, and then asked them again, look, is there any way we can just meet up in person and do this trade? And they finally said yes. They picked a spot about halfway between each other to do the meet and trade. It was at a public place, a grocery store where the tables are, where you can eat. The plan was they would meet, he would pull out his computer or phone, transfer the Bitcoin, and then they would hand him the cash once it cleared. And for this particular trade, we're talking a $30,000 transaction. And once the transfer was complete, they would both part ways. So he arrives at the grocery store.

They message him saying what table they're at. He goes up to the person sitting at the table, and it's not who he expected. But this was like completely, like completely shocking. It was a woman. I didn't expect a woman in the first place, obviously. You know, I expected, you know, some guy, you know, a neckbeard or whatever. I'm going to be honest, man. She was a pretty attractive woman in her maybe 30s.

And, you know, had kids and stuff. And I guess she had a husband, but she was a pretty good looking woman, drove a Mercedes, would never think that she knows anything about Bitcoin or the dark net or anything like that. Just like looks like a well-to-do person from the state I was in. You know what I mean? You would never think twice. It was pretty crazy. This was an intense meeting, though. There's some sweaty palms here for sure. I mean, 30 grand is going to be transferred

between these two right now. He's going to give her $30,000 in Bitcoin and she's going to give him $30,000 in cash. Once you transfer Bitcoin to someone else, there's no way to reverse it. A lot can go wrong here. She could just take the Bitcoin and run off or she could give him the cash and then follow him to his car and steal it back. It's nerve-wracking for sure. And what are you going to do? Sit there and count out $30,000

on a table in a grocery store? That's pretty suspicious. So you just have to trust that it's all there. It was a pretty high profile exchange because there was a lot of trust that had to be between us. You know what I mean? I think she was scared of me a little bit and she freaked me out. So it was just, you know, fear was the motivator there. But they've done business a few times in the past through the mail. So he gave it a shot and it worked. She got her bitcoins, he got his cash, and they both drove home safe and sound. But this started a new relationship with her, which turned out to be a weekly meeting. Every week, they would do this exchange.

Pretty much $30,000 a week, $30,000 to $40,000 a week. $30,000 to $40,000 a week in a package. Wow. Yeah. That's a lot of money. All $100 bills. Volume goes down in higher denominations and stuff like that but yeah it was uh where do you think she was getting tons of cash over and over and over who who comes up with 30 grand a week to give out well she would what she would do is like i would sell to her i would sell to her at a rate that was below market so she's basically getting bitcoin she's getting the bitcoin i'm selling her the bitcoin right and market. So she's basically getting Bitcoin.

She's getting the Bitcoin. I'm selling her the Bitcoin, right? And she's going to be like, all right, I'll give you the cash, but I'm going to give you market minus 6%, right? And then so what she does is now she'll go back onto local Bitcoins and sell that same Bitcoin that I just gave her, that I just sent her to her wallet for 6% over market. So now she's making 12% on the 40 Bitcoin that I gave her. It's a pretty good return.

And she's just turning over cash constantly. So she's got a constant cash flow, but pretty much like me, except it was legitimate, I think, hopefully. Whoa, crazy what goes on out there, huh? I never knew these kinds of meets and exchanges were taking place out there. But there you go. Oh, and V gave me her screen name, and I looked her up. She has an interesting reputation, actually.

Her name actually appeared in the Silk Road court records. She was apparently a vendor there and got busted. So she switched to being a Bitcoin exchanger, which apparently was going well, but it's kind of confusing that she was part of the whole Silk Road roll-up, but still actively doing this kind of stuff. I'm not sure what happened with her,

but it was clear to him that she'd been doing this for a long time. Now somebody's seen your face that you're bringing somebody new in and you don't really know who they are. clear to him that she'd been doing this for a long time. Now, now somebody has seen your face that, you know, you're bringing somebody new in and you don't really know who they are. Um, but it was necessary. And sometimes, you know, yes, OPSEC is very important. And could I have sent somebody out there to handle the money or whatever? I tried it before and it didn't go well. And so like some things you have to handle

yourself and you kind of have to put faith like wherever you put faith and, you know, hope that it goes OK. You know, there's times where you kind of have to expose yourself, at least in my instance. I don't know. There's people smarter than me that, you know, have successfully like either laundered their Bitcoin or got it into cash some other way. But for me, that was the easiest way for me. And I felt the most secure way at the time. So now things are really churning. He's got the FE status on Alphabay. And he actually opened up as a vendor on Dream Market 2 at this point.

And he's got a great supplier of cocaine. He's got a fair amount of orders coming in. And he's got this Bitcoin exchanger delivering cash. Now, even though he's getting 30 grand a week from all this, he wasn't able to keep all that. So there was overhead. So we had to pay the shippers. We had to pay my buddy. I had to pay my higher up a percentage.

My pocket, maybe, honestly, probably only three or four grand a week. That was for the first few months. By the time this thing really kicked up, he was pulling in more like $10,000 a week. And so with that amount of cash, he decided to buy a car. I mean, we had a dealership that,

well, my higher up had a dealership. He knew everybody in the city we were in and he knew all the people there and they were into some stuff that was not so clean. So he bought a BMW at this place? I was able to get a Beamer through them. But most of the money that I kept and I had better weeks than that I had worse weeks than that most of the money you can't really put this in there but most of the money like I didn't really spend anything it was just you know I kind of just went into my pocket and stayed there you know I paid rent and everything but that was pretty much it and I bought a car that was it now while he was

busy with his business he would occasionally visit his parents. But I would still, I was still only about an hour and a half from my parents. So I, I would come home and, you know, I'd be like, they would be like, what are you up to? Because they knew that I was living, you know, in another city. And they were like, well, what are you doing? And I was like, well, I'm, you know, I started trading Bitcoin and this was after the bubble. He's talking about the Bitcoin bubble in November of 2013. This is where Bitcoin rose all the way to $1,000 per Bitcoin. But for the next two years after that, it kind of went down to hover between $200 and $500 per coin. And this was the time when he was doing all this.

Oh, and keep in mind, he's still just 22 years old at this point. So Bitcoin was kind of like a household name at that point. And I was like, yeah, like I'm trading Bitcoin on this, on local Bitcoins or whatever, and I'm making a 7%. I'm making a 7% profit on every, you know, on every trade that I make or whatever. But I was like like i have all that stuff that i need and they were like okay at first they were like okay um eventually my mom kind of caught on because she's smart i had come home one time with a new bmw um and uh

my mom was pretty much like hey let's go to dinner to dinner. Let's go to a popular city and, you know, let's go have some dinner somewhere. And I was like, okay. She's down. We get a bottle of wine and then like another bottle of wine. And my mom doesn't drink. Like I've never really like sat down and like drank with my mom or gotten drunk with my mother where she's not not like that she's not the type of person um but the situation i guess called for it at the time and she was like so what are you really doing and i was like what do you mean i'm selling bitcoin and

she's like no you're not i know you're not doing that what what's up like what are you doing in the city that you're in and i was like eventually like i knew that she knew and I just kind of spilled beans. I said, I'm selling cocaine on the Internet. She was like, what do you mean you're selling cocaine on the Internet? You know, she didn't know how any of that worked. And I was like, I'm being very safe. And I this is the best way that I know how to do it. And I'm making good money. And, uh, you know, like, um, I never said I liked

it or anything like that, but I was like, I need money. And this is what I'm doing for money. And she said, she kind of calmly took that in and was like, uh, you need to stop doing that soon. And I said, okay. And she said, you need to stop doing that by, you know, and then she gave me a month, like a month that I should stop by. And I was like, okay, I'll stop. But she didn't, she didn't react in the way that I expected her to react. I expected her to, you know, freak out and be like, what the, what the hell are you doing? You know, you're being an idiot. You know, you just got arrested, but she didn't react like that at all it was more like okay i understand but this is a risk that you don't need right now so stop at this point but i think i had told her like the details that were

kind of so above her head like just it it was a sophisticated operation you know what i mean so it wasn't like something that, it wasn't like I was selling cocaine on the street corner or something like that. It was, it was something that was very organized and, you know, run like a business, you know? So I don't think she worried as much as she probably should have, but it made me, it made me more comfortable. That's for sure. He didn't stop. I'm not sure if he had any intentions of stopping, because this was great money. Every month, the number of orders would grow and grow, starting from 10 orders a month to 30 orders a month,

and soon hundreds of orders a month. He was selling cocaine by the gram, the eighth, and in quarters. Sometimes he would sell whole ounces, but the margins just didn't make sense for him to do that all the time. Sometimes he would sell heroin, too. And margins just didn't make sense for him to do that all the time. Sometimes he would sell heroin, too. And he was establishing some direct sales with people, not through darknet marketplaces, just directly through secure email. Business was booming. I think at our highest point, we were shipping out, I think our best day was maybe 40 or 45 packages, which was a lot. That's a lot of, uh, a lot of labels, a lot of vacuum

sealing, a lot of Mylar. Um, and that was, uh, that was like a milestone for us. That was like, we, we, we made it, you know? Um, all right. So why'd you stop? I really stopped because at that point, we had just gotten to the point where I was burnt out. My shippers were burnt out. I started getting paranoid. The price of cocaine was kind of all over the place. Um, my buddy had left, so I was kind of on my own. Um, and, uh, I just thought it would, it was kind of a good time to wrap up shop. And, uh, you know, my, my higher up wasn't, wasn't happy with that decision, but, you know, respected it in the end. And, uh, just, uh, I just, you know, it was just, it was just the stress and the paranoia level. I was like, something's going to happen to me. I, you know, I don't want to do this anymore. It was just, it became, it became not exciting. It became,

uh, more of a chore than it, than it was like something new and exciting at that point. It wasn't anything that was really exciting to me anymore. So I decided to hang up my hat. So he took down his listings on all the darknet markets, shipped out all his last orders, shut down his vendor account. Then he did one last cash-in on all his Bitcoins and stopped dealing on darknet markets. Did you move back home with your parents? Or what happened after?

I mean, you had an apartment there just for that. So where'd you go? Yeah, I kept the apartment. I stayed in the apartment. I kind of just hung out with friends that I had there for a while. I did move back home for a brief period what was the plan like what were you going to do next so actually my my uh sentencing was

coming up for that original case that i talked about jeez he's still there and get sentenced or hadn't been resolved oh my god and so that was another reason why I had stopped. I forgot to include that, but like I was potentially going to prison and, um, I, you know, there was no way that I was going to be able to operate, you know, from, from prison if I went. Uh, so I, I shut down for that reason as well. But, um, and that, I think that February, like I had, uh, I had a sent, I had a sentencing date or something. And I actually got arrested again, um, driving really fucked up. So I, I was driving, um, I had just dropped off money to my higher up again, because we were still doing some street level stuff. Um, I dropped off money for like a kilo or something like that. And I was just really messed up on pills, Xanax and just all this shit that I've been taking because my stress level was like out of control. So the stress was high because I had an upcoming sentencing date. I had no idea what was really going to happen, if I was going to prison or not.

I had, I was paranoid about the vendor account. You know, I wasn't sure if my OPSEC was good enough. I wasn't sure if maybe, like, I had just read an indictment on somebody recently, I think at the time when like the feds were basically intercepting packages, acting as buyers. And I was paranoid that maybe that had happened to me. There were a string of packages that went missing in the postal system and I was worried about that.

So just all of that combined with just overall anxiety, it was just a lot. And, um, I, uh, I would to combat that, I, you know, I took a large volume of, of, you know, depressants and like, like similar to Xanax and, you know, Percocets and Oxys and all of that. So, um, yeah, the stress level was super high at that time. And I was driving back and I like kind of fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into the median and like got out of my car and like looked at it. And like my, like one wheel was like hanging off and I was like, this is totally, I can totally drive this home, you know? And like, so I got back in the car and started driving again. And, uh, I heard the lights behind me pulled over. I had a hundred Xanax pills in my pocket. Um, and they didn't believe that they were for personal use. So they charged me with another felony, booked me. Judge said no bail,

uh, because I had another pending case and got locked up for basically six months total on the original case that I had, plus this one. The ride was over, I guess. Locked up at 23. In total, he spent a year as a Darknet Marketplace vendor. What's ironic here is that the police had no idea he was a former vendor. He was locked up for his previous charge of selling drugs in college and driving while intoxicated. His OPSEC apparently was good enough to not get caught for all the stuff he did. Selling cocaine either online or in the streets is a major crime in the U.S. I got out of county.

I went to county prison. I got out of county prison and immediately, voluntarily, like I flew out west to a rehab center. I was still on probation, and as a condition of that probation, I had to fly back every 45 days to check in with my probation officer. It was very stupid, but that was one of the conditions. So every 45 days, I would fly back from the rehab center I was at and check in with her, come back to the state I was in and continue rehab treatment. So this has gone fine like the two times I'd done it already.

My third time, I fly back home. I get in late night and in the morning, my mother drives me to the probation office in the state that I have probation in. She parks the car. I get out. I go inside and the probation officer is like, hey, we're going to go down this hallway actually. And I said, okay, because her room is like, hey, we're going to go down this hallway, actually. And I said, okay, because her room is right, you know, like right there on the right. So I was like, this is weird. Like, I wonder what's going on. And we go down the hall and she's like, all right, come this way with me. We turn left.

And I walk into this conference room and there's two ATF agents there. And then they handcuffed me, put me in the seat and they were like, we know who you are. We just arrested your higher up months ago. And they kind of laid out printouts of my AlphaBay listings. They said the vendor name that I had. They were like, we know your, you know, this vendor name. They had printouts of my cocaine listings. They had printouts of the heroin listings. They kind of had me pretty much dead to rights. They had a stupid video that my higher up had on his phone. And it was just, they were just like, you know, you can either give up your phone right now, or we can get a warrant for it. So I gave my phone to

them. As I was sitting there, I was like, there's only one person who could have, you know, given them like this level of access to like this information. And I knew who it was, it was my higher up. And I was like, at that moment, I was like, he absolutely just destroyed me. Now, his higher up was the guy who was giving him all the cocaine to sell. We knew this guy ratted him out because of a call he got from his higher up a month earlier. He had called me when I was in rehab and was like, hey, uh, I got indicted and, um, he I'm on the run right now. And I was like, what, what do you mean you're on the run?

And they were like, well, they let me out because, uh, at the time I didn't really know how the federal system worked, but they had let him out because he had agreed to, um, talk. And they let him out and he went on the run to up north somewhere and didn't come back for months. And he was like, yeah, I'm on the run right now. Be careful. Like they have my phone. I don't really know what's on it. And I was like, holy shit, man. Like, why are you calling? I hung up the phone and I, I messaged him on a, on a messaging app. And I was like, why are you, why would you call me? Like like this is so fucked up like

i'm scared like you know what i mean and um at that point i kind of in the back of my mind i kind of knew i was fucked because uh it was not a good situation and so they had told me when i was back back in this conference room they're like we have we have your higher up. Um, he's, they don't specifically say like, he's, you know, he gave information that led to you because they won't say that, but you can kind of put the pieces together. So I decided to, uh, cooperate with the government and, uh, cause they were looking for a lot of information related to him because he had a lot of street stuff going on. And I decided to cooperate with them and give them what I knew. So it kind of started from there.

My mom came in. I asked them if I could see my mom because I wasn't sure if I was ever going to see my mother again, honestly, because I wasn't sure if I was going to get out or if I would get out or how bail worked or anything like that in the federal system. And, uh, my mom came in when white as a ghost, uh, started, you know, bawling her eyes out and, um, you know, it was a super traumatic situation and, um, super uncomfortable. And I, you know, I told my mom, you know, I love you and everything's going to be all right. And they took me in the car.

They drove me back to the state that the indictment came out of. And basically, I had an arraignment hearing. The judge knew, well, the prosecutor, the main prosecutor knew that I was willing to cooperate. So they let me out that day, which was bizarre, with an ankle monitor. And that was that was pretty much it that day. It was just it felt like a dream. Um, I remember going out to dinner with my parents that night because we were celebrating that they had let me out.

And, um, the next day it hit me like, wow, I'm really in the hole here. You know what I mean? I got to do a lot to, uh, to get this sentence down because right then i was looking at actually a 10-year mandatory minimum because i had prior cases and i had um i had that criminal history and i had a five-year mandatory minimum for the cocaine distribution so they charged me with conspiracy to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine. They didn't charge me with any heroin. And I think if I had chosen not to cooperate with them, they would have hit me with that charge as well. So I got lucky there. But still, I was looking at 10 years and they made it clear to me, like, you're looking at 10 years.

V didn't want to go to prison for 10 years. And they made it clear to me, like, you're looking at 10 years. V didn't want to go to prison for 10 years. So he decided to cooperate with the feds, which means he was going to start snitching. And besides not wanting to go to prison, he felt like his higher-ups snitched on him first. So he was just going to snitch back. So basically the way it works in the federal system, it's very black and white. If you tell, even if somebody told on you first and you're just telling on them and their operation, you're both snitches, right? It doesn't matter if the first person told first and you were caught in that. If you snitch as well, you're also a snitch there's no like there's no like mitigating factors like oh well you're less of a snitch than this guy because he he screwed you over first it doesn't work like that um so yes like i consider myself a snitch it's not something that i consider

you know like damaging to my moral character like it's not something that I wake up and I'm like, Oh, geez, like, I wish I hadn't snitched on the guy that snitched on me. Like, wow, like, that's so terrible of me. You know, the guy screwed me over. And I did what I had to do. And did I maybe put, you know, people that were like, not super connected towards him away, most likely, but you do whatever it takes to like, you do whatever it takes to get out as soon as possible. And I think that a lot of people don't understand that. Like if you're looking at 10 years, you can say from your chair,

like if you're not a criminal, like, Oh, like, you know, you should have taken that time, man. You should have taken that on the chin unless you're in it man and like you see like you know you see like 10 years flash before your eyes then you can say something like yeah like i i took that on the chin but if you're not in the game and you're like oh well you shouldn't you shouldn't have snitched or whatever i don't want to hear it from you you know what i mean it's just not the same and like you're not you're not in the game so you don't you don have, you don't get to form an opinion on that. That's just, that's just my, that's just the way I look at it. you know who this or that is? And I would say yes or no. They would show photographs. And they would say, like, did he, was he present at this time on this day? And I either answered yes or no. And the people that I was able to identify and the people that I was close with,

these were all people that were highly connected to my higher up. And like I said, my choice to cooperate was based on his cooperation and his willingness to just take me down without blinking an eye. And so I chose to cooperate on that basis. But also, even if he hadn't, I most likely probably would have because self-preservation would have kicked in there. And I don't want to make any excuse for that. Oh, I only snitched because he snitched on me first. I don't think that was the case. I think that I probably would have done that regardless. So the people that I did know and that I was close to, and that I still had, you know, a number four and that I had met up with previously, some of those people, the feds were super interested in and wanted me to set up basically a controlled buy. So one of my, one of the shippers for another operation that my partner had or my higher up had, um, I was actually, uh, I actually knew him pretty well cause he had worked for me at one point and he was selling weed, I guess.

And they were like, yeah, why don't you go buy, uh, some weed from him? And they wired me up. Um, they gave me, they put in my wallet, this, um, microphone, but it looked like a credit card. Um, and so it was like a credit card that goes in your wallet, but it, it has three little dots on it and it's super clear audio. And I went in there and I, um, I bought, I was like, Hey, what's up, man? You know, everything was cool and I I bought I was like hey what's up man you know everything was cool and I bought weed from him and I brought it out and they they log everything every purchase that they make

because they give you cash to buy the drugs with but that's all coming out of the budget and stuff like that so it was just super like I felt like I was in almost like just a weird movie. You know what I mean?

It was just like I had these guys picking me up at my house and like taking me to do these either like sit downs where I was wired up or like, you know, control buys or whatever they needed me to do just to get my sentence reduced as much as I could. I did whatever it took. Now, while the feds told him he's looking at a minimum of 10 years in prison, I think that probably wasn't true. He probably would have got something like five years. But that's just a strategy that the feds used to try to get you to cooperate. He was living at home during all this and was able to convince the ATF and FBI that he needed his ankle monitor removed in order to do these controlled buys. And they agreed and took it off.

So I cooperated for a good eight months. Now I was able to look up his criminal record online and public databases. And it's interesting because a lot of his court records are sealed, meaning they're not visible to the public. And I always had a hunch that the reason why they seal court records is because the person has flipped and is working for the feds, and they don't want anyone to know this guy is actively snitching. Anyway, eventually the feds got enough information on him and brought him before the judge for the sentencing. He was given a split sentence. He had to spend six months in prison, 12 months of house arrest, and four years of supervised release. He also had to pay a $100 fine. So he went back to prison for the second time

in his life. It's a very strange environment. I think that prison taught me that you have to look out for yourself at all times. You have to keep your head down, stay healthy, take care of yourself is the number one advice I would give to anybody. You know what I mean? Don't trust anyone. I did a very short sentence. So I was able to escape by by just kind of keeping my head down and you know not really talking to anybody that I that didn't need to be spoken to I would say that it changed me in the way that like you're always around people 100% of the time you have to be watching your back 100% of the time. So yeah, did it harden me up? I don't think so. I don't think I was in there long enough.

If I was in there for a longer period of time, I think I would have been permanently changed, yeah. When he got out of prison, he was basically under house arrest with an ankle monitor on at all times so his probation officer could see where he was. Basically, the way that worked was, you know, you could get out for, I had gym hours, I had school hours. I had, you know, I had some other stuff in there. If you had a doctor's appointment, you would get out. But overall, that went pretty smooth, but slow.

And I actually, I actually got off early. I wasn't supposed to get off the ankle monitor, um, for a couple more months. And I got off of it because of, uh, Corona. And, um, my probation officer actually called me and was like, Hey, uh, just a random day. He was like, Hey, I'm taking you off the ankle monitor. And I was like, I asked him why. And he's like, do you want me to keep it on? And I was like, no. And he was like, all right, uh, just take some scissors and cut off the ankle monitor. And I was like, okay. And I realized like, at first I was like, sweet, like I'm not in an ankle monitor anymore. And then I realized like I still couldn't go anywhere because it was,

it was, it was Corona. Everything was shut down. So the same rules kind of apply. It was actually almost even worse because school moved, you know, virtual and all that. So I've been in the house a lot more than I was when I was on the ankle monitor. I guess if you ever want to know what it's like having probation or house arrest, this year has taught us what that's like. Everything was shut down this whole year and we

couldn't go out or do anything. I guess that makes it an easy year to serve probation through though, huh? So actually, I'm actually on probation for a couple more years, but I don't, I'm not going to be on for as long as I thought I was going to be on for. So yeah, in the next couple of years, I'll be off, but I'm still on probation. So I still talk to a PO and everything, but the hardest part is definitely behind me. I do what I, you know, I try my best to repair the damage that I've done. I know that the choices I made were not good choices, you know, and I heard a lot of people and one of the questions that I got a lot

on the, I just want to address this, but one of the questions that I got a lot on the AMA. Oh, so you might be wondering how I found this guy. Yeah. He popped into Reddit one day and made a post saying, I'm a former dark net market drug dealer. Ask me anything. And so I immediately asked him, Hey, can I interview you to hear the whole story? And so here we are. I mean, a question I had was selling these drugs online, especially heroin, could cause overdoses and deaths. Do you have regrets from what you've done?

Definitely. And I think about who could have possibly overdosed a lot more than you can imagine. And it's something that I wish I had never sold on the dark net. heroin for that long. You know, we were primarily, um, we were primarily cocaine and, um, heroin didn't come into the picture for a long time. And when it did, it was for a very short amount of time, maybe a month or two, but you know, in that month or two, I caused a lot of damage to a lot of people, I think. And, um, I regret it tremendously, but all I can do is, you know, um, deal with that guilt, move on. I can't sit on it. You know, I have to move on from it and, and recognize that it's wrong, but there, there's nothing more than I can do. You know, I, I, I served consequences for my actions and, um, and I'm, I'm trying to put that all behind me now. A big thank you to V for sharing the story with us.

If you're interested in contacting V, his email address is in the show notes or at darknetdiaries.com. I call this show Darknet Diaries not because it's focused on the darknet, but because I like to think of the darknet as all this secret, hidden, dark stuff that happens online. Stuff that we're not supposed to ever see or know about. So that's why I don't just cover stories about the Darknet. But hey, this

is actually the third episode I've done about Darknet markets. And if you want to hear more about them, check out episode 24 called Operation Bayonet, which is about the Alpha Bay Darknet marketplace. And then check out episode 58 called OxyMonster, which is about another vendor. The other day, someone told me they were listening to the show while going for a run, but they got so sucked into it that they ended up running farther than Forrest Gump did. If you love this show that much, consider donating to it to help keep the Wi-Fi on. Visit patreon.com slash darknetdiaries to give your financial support. Oh, and as a thank you, you'll get

bonus episodes and an ad-free feed. This show is made by me, the guy who's always on dark mode, Jack Recider. Sound design and some original music was created by Andrew Merriweather, who loves staring at dry paint. Editing helped this episode by the market manipulator, Damien, and our theme music is by the botnet known as Breakmaster Cylinder. And even though I upgraded the RAM on my computer just so I could run Slack better, this is Darknet Diaries.