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Dark Web Drug Vendor Pleads Guilty After Feds Traced His Bitcoin Transactions

67 points by wglb 8y ago

jMyles 8y ago
Finally, chemical compounds in demand by adults for private consumption will no longer be available. Victory in the war on drugs!
- tylersmith 8y ago
  You're being downvoted but imprisoning OxyMonster for selling things to willing customers will have almost 0 effect on the opioid markets. It's a costly symbolic gesture that will affect nobody but him and his family.
  - nighthawk1 8y ago
    I think many times these arrests are meant to be a demonstration that law enforcement is doing their job. I imagine even the arresting agents realize this guy is a drop in the ocean and his customers will quickly flock to his replacement. Similar to those folks who work in a corporate environment who complete a document that they know will be jettisoned into a corporate black hole but checks off a requirement.
    - tylersmith 8y ago
      Sure, but "doing their job" is a bullshit excuse for taking somebody's life away. Honestly it's worse IMO. They know it accomplishes nothing except making them look a tiny bit better to their bosses. Destroying a person's life for career advancement is quite different than making a worthless gdoc that nobody will read.
      - giarc 8y ago
        >excuse for taking somebody's life away. There are a million other things he could have sold online that wouldn't have resulted in 20 years in jail. Whether you agree with the illegal status of drugs or not, if someone choose to subvert the law, you can't expect law enforcement not to prosecute.
        tylersmith 8y ago
        You should expect that they will, in the same way you should expect a serial killer to murder people, but they're still garbage that wouldn't thrive in a just world. You're absolutely correct that you should always expect people to sell you out for a little selfish comfort because most of them are trash.
        jMyles 8y ago
        > if someone choose to subvert the law, you can't expect law enforcement not to prosecute. Sure, that's fine. But it also obfuscates the more important point: I can expect (and I do expect) that a reasonable, mature society stop this idiotic practice in the first place. Refusing to learn from the failures of drug prohibition throughout history is one thing, but continuing a current and clearly failed experiment for an entire century is flabbergasting and childish. Who will be the last person who's life is ruined for no reason? Will it be this dude? Or someone in the same position tomorrow?
      - s73v3r_ 8y ago
        "Sure, but "doing their job" is a bullshit excuse for taking somebody's life away." I can't have sympathy for someone who was selling opioids to addicts, exacerbating a terrible epidemic. "Destroying a person's life" The feds didn't do that, his own actions did that.
        tylersmith 8y ago
        > I can't have sympathy for someone who was selling opioids to addicts, exacerbating a terrible epidemic. That's a philosophical question about how much people own their own lives versus how much you should be able to dictate their lives for your own selfish sense of peace of mind. We're not going to change anyone's minds on that in HN comments. > The feds didn't do that, his own actions did that. The "feds" did do that, in response to his actions, because people like you manadte via votes that they do that.
        s73v3r_ 8y ago
        No. He did it to himself, through his actions.
        TomMarius 8y ago
        He's not there voluntarily, is he?
        s73v3r_ 8y ago
        He is responsible for his own actions. No one forced him to become a drug kingpin.
        jMyles 8y ago
        That's just not the point. Not the point at all. Forget this guy for a second. The real question here is: will this act (or generally, all of the actions taken by the state pursuant to enforcing prohibition) help anyone? Will it reduce death, disease, crime, misery, addiction?
  - Clubber 8y ago
    I'm fairly certain the OP was being sarcastic.
    - tylersmith 8y ago
      Yes, and is being downvoted for it. My reply was agreeing with him but without the sarcastic shtick.
      - Clubber 8y ago
        People downvote for the stupidest reasons anymore. It will be the death of good, well thought out but not conformist commentary and become a boring monoculture, just like everywhere else. I'm getting in the habit of looking for stupid downvotes and upvote. I wager at least 2 for this comment.
        Clubber 8y ago
        >People downvote for the stupidest reasons anymore. It will be the death of good, well thought out but not conformist commentary and become a boring monoculture, just like everywhere else. I'm getting in the habit of looking for stupid downvotes and upvote. I wager at least 2 for this comment. I got 4 downvotes for this. It's sad that just 4 people can ruin one of the last places to have a good conversation on the internet. Perhaps a reconsideration of how the karma system works is in order, in order to save meaningful dialog. Off the top of my head, I would suggest any downvote also removes a karma point from the down voter. Instead of risking karma for taking a considerate but unpopular position, people willing to quell thought and ideas should be risking their own karma. I believe suppressing ideas and thought is far worse than presenting an unpopular idea and therefore should be at a much higher cost.
        wglb 8y ago
        Don't complain about downvoting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7961827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7961827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2569919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2569919
  - belorn 8y ago
    That almost 0 effect is what practical every form of enforcement against smuggling is going to be. A person not declaring items being brought into the country is very unlikely to have a effect on the federal budget, or any effect of on a legal market, and yet practical all border controls has someone employed to check for undeclared items.
    - tylersmith 8y ago
      Yeah it's a ridiculous waste of money to infringe on others' rights.
tylersmith 8y ago
Using technology to subvert the State is a large cat and mouse game and the first mice are bound to make mistakes. It's the risk of jumping in before having a better grasp of the underlying technology that you rely on for security. Eventually the market will move nearly completely to more private currencies but the "game" will continue. Some people like to focus on the "high reward" part of "high risk/high reward" a lot more than the "high risk" part.
- CodeWriter23 8y ago
  Storing one’s ledger in a publicly-viewable, massively replicated database is a pretty big on the risk factors IMO.
  - tylersmith 8y ago
    Yes, absolutely. Unfortunately the majority of people don't fully understand what the system is and how it works. Sound bites and misinformation are regurgitated and spread like the plague while solid understanding requires a lot of work exploration.
cf498 8y ago
>US authorities arrested Vallerius in September last year, at the Atlanta airport after he arrived in the US to attend and participate in the World Beard and Mustache Championships that was being held in Austin, Texas. And is facing a life sentence. Dont travel to such countries. Never ever period. Crossing a border is a big decision, no matter how cheap the tickets are. I dont get people who keep doing this, its not like those are split second decisions. Why in your right mind would you do this without carefully considering what the effects of you being in that country might be. I had female friends talking about going to holiday in Dubai, another friend with a Turkish passport visited his family in the south east recently. Think for a moment for gods sake.
- tylersmith 8y ago
  Overconfidence is one of OPSECs biggest vulnerabilities. He was much safer in France but clearly felt he was completely under the radar. Using LocalBitcoin accounts directly is a big sign that he didn't fully understand how deeply he was in a mess.
- nighthawk1 8y ago
  Similarly when these folks hang out in countries that would happily extradite to the USA. The smarter ones thought ahead about such matters.
- giarc 8y ago
  He obviously didn't know they had his identity, but I would agree, if running a criminal enterprise, be careful where you go.
  - cf498 8y ago
    Not just then. Your local laws and rights dont mean shit in your holiday destination. This should be the very first question you ask yourself when traveling.
    - tylersmith 8y ago
      Hell, even when traveling domestically to other states you should ask that question and research where you're going.
yolo1897 8y ago
they found so much on his laptop, he didn't even bothered to encrypt his stuff? it seems that he have made so many mistakes for his job
- always_good 8y ago
  Even then, nothing seems perfect. I have FileVault turned on in OSX. But I noticed that, since the latest version, if I open my laptop within some interval, it doesn't even make me type my password again. And sometimes I've even opened my laptop many hours later and it inexplicably bypasses the login. Just seems so precarious. I read how the FBI(?) faked a scene (a fight?) near the Silk Road creator so that they could nab his laptop while it was open. Well, I chuckle at how unnecessary that would be for my laptop: just walk up and open it. The piece of shit probably won't even make you log in.
alistproducer2 8y ago
Dude's OPSEC game was pretty weak. If you're going to do stuff that could get you imprisoned for life, you'd think you would be more thorough.
ttoinou 8y ago
All in all, this is just another case where authorities have proven once more that Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency isn't really anonymous as it was advertised for the past decade. Wait who advertised that ? I have always read that bitcoin was pseudonymous (not anonymous) and with public record of all transactions and wallets
- tylersmith 8y ago
  Unfortunately it's a common misconception. Many people with a surge knowledge if the technology believe it's anonymous. It seems like that the guy himself believed it was anonymous.
- deltateam 8y ago
  "wait, my employer isn't automatically withholding the earnings from this money, I've never been in this situation before, does nobody know that I have some money now, so therefore I don't have to pay taxes!" pretty much everyone in cryptocurrency, whether they thought a little harder about it or not
- dogma1138 8y ago
  Bitcoin isn’t really pseudonymous either (not by design) it only has one type of transaction that is always public and there is no inherent deniability as far as wallet ownership goes. There are some currencies that attempt at providing anonymity or at least deniability but those also haven’t been tested yet either against capable forensic adversaries.
  - ethn 8y ago
    It has many types of transactions, in fact it has an entire script language for creating different types.
    - dogma1138 8y ago
      I know it has its own smart contract scripting but that isn’t used, there are only public transactions there, anonymous transactions, multi addresses and multi key wallets etc aren’t built in so there is no plausible deniability.
yani 8y ago
It is not right to have customs search his laptop. Anyone with that much power will abuse it one way or another.
- cstejerean 8y ago
  Why isn’t it right? By this point they had a very reasonable suspicion that he was the criminal they were looking for based on his bitcoin addresses and then further confirmed by analyzing the writing style. That certainly seems like a good enough reason to search someone’s laptop.
- tptacek 8y ago
  Customs in most (maybe all?) countries enjoy something pretty close to absolute search powers.
cup-of-tea 8y ago
Did he try to sell drugs in the US? How can they arrest him for things he did back home?
- tylersmith 8y ago
  For selling to US customers. Similar to the GDPR and European customers.
  - merinowool 8y ago
    It is not going to be long before people will have to wear armbands stating their citizenship...
- joeblow9999 8y ago
  International treaties between all the countries effectively make most USA laws international.
armitron 8y ago
Even with all the mistakes that he made, I think he would have easily walked had he not done the thing that sealed his fate: bringing his hot "work" laptop (possibly unencrypted or otherwise compromised) with him to the US. All his other mistakes put together were not enough for the feds to hang him since there is plausible deniability: The "writing style analysis" may seem advanced but in practice is laughable in terms of false positives. Being in a possession of a bitcoin address that received payments from a drug trafficker isn't enough evidence to convict. But of course allowing the feds to go through his laptop where he had the trafficking signing keys and other credentials can not be explained away :-0
58x14 8y ago
I don’t understand the sentiment of these comments. This isn’t an impressive example of mass blockchain-and-IP-address correlation and collection - this is an embarrassing example of an inexperienced user publically posting wallet IDs directly linked to his Localbitcoins account. This is as much “tracing” as it would take to look up a license plate. Add to that a lack of full disk encryption and international travel...
- dang 8y ago
  Could you please not use allcaps for emphasis in HN comments? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
  - 58x14 8y ago
    To what are you referring? /s
    - dang 8y ago
      Thanks for the edit!
amingilani 8y ago
And this is why Zcash excites me so much! It's everything Bitcoin is and much, much, more!
globalrobin00 8y ago
Are you from US, and have a verified coinbase account? Then what are you waiting for when you can be earning up to 0.5 BTC weekly, with your empty verified coinbase wallet.. The major criteria on how to make these bitcoins from Coinbase goes thus; The Coinbase account must be a verified with identity. The Coinbase account must have successful transaction in it’s history. The Coinbase account must be US based. i.e it must be regulated in USA by USD. The coinbase account holder must be someone with self discipline and integrity. For more information on how to make these bitcoins on Coinbase provided that you meet up with the criteria, contact +1-423-445-2281

67 points by wglb 8y ago

Finally, chemical compounds in demand by adults for private consumption will no longer be available. Victory in the war on drugs!

tylersmith 8y ago
You're being downvoted but imprisoning OxyMonster for selling things to willing customers will have almost 0 effect on the opioid markets. It's a costly symbolic gesture that will affect nobody but him and his family.
- nighthawk1 8y ago
  I think many times these arrests are meant to be a demonstration that law enforcement is doing their job. I imagine even the arresting agents realize this guy is a drop in the ocean and his customers will quickly flock to his replacement. Similar to those folks who work in a corporate environment who complete a document that they know will be jettisoned into a corporate black hole but checks off a requirement.
  - tylersmith 8y ago
    Sure, but "doing their job" is a bullshit excuse for taking somebody's life away. Honestly it's worse IMO. They know it accomplishes nothing except making them look a tiny bit better to their bosses. Destroying a person's life for career advancement is quite different than making a worthless gdoc that nobody will read.
    - giarc 8y ago
      >excuse for taking somebody's life away. There are a million other things he could have sold online that wouldn't have resulted in 20 years in jail. Whether you agree with the illegal status of drugs or not, if someone choose to subvert the law, you can't expect law enforcement not to prosecute.
      - tylersmith 8y ago
        You should expect that they will, in the same way you should expect a serial killer to murder people, but they're still garbage that wouldn't thrive in a just world. You're absolutely correct that you should always expect people to sell you out for a little selfish comfort because most of them are trash.
      - jMyles 8y ago
        > if someone choose to subvert the law, you can't expect law enforcement not to prosecute. Sure, that's fine. But it also obfuscates the more important point: I can expect (and I do expect) that a reasonable, mature society stop this idiotic practice in the first place. Refusing to learn from the failures of drug prohibition throughout history is one thing, but continuing a current and clearly failed experiment for an entire century is flabbergasting and childish. Who will be the last person who's life is ruined for no reason? Will it be this dude? Or someone in the same position tomorrow?
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      "Sure, but "doing their job" is a bullshit excuse for taking somebody's life away." I can't have sympathy for someone who was selling opioids to addicts, exacerbating a terrible epidemic. "Destroying a person's life" The feds didn't do that, his own actions did that.
      - tylersmith 8y ago
        > I can't have sympathy for someone who was selling opioids to addicts, exacerbating a terrible epidemic. That's a philosophical question about how much people own their own lives versus how much you should be able to dictate their lives for your own selfish sense of peace of mind. We're not going to change anyone's minds on that in HN comments. > The feds didn't do that, his own actions did that. The "feds" did do that, in response to his actions, because people like you manadte via votes that they do that.
        s73v3r_ 8y ago
        No. He did it to himself, through his actions.
        TomMarius 8y ago
        He's not there voluntarily, is he?
        s73v3r_ 8y ago
        He is responsible for his own actions. No one forced him to become a drug kingpin.
        jMyles 8y ago
        That's just not the point. Not the point at all. Forget this guy for a second. The real question here is: will this act (or generally, all of the actions taken by the state pursuant to enforcing prohibition) help anyone? Will it reduce death, disease, crime, misery, addiction?
- Clubber 8y ago
  I'm fairly certain the OP was being sarcastic.
  - tylersmith 8y ago
    Yes, and is being downvoted for it. My reply was agreeing with him but without the sarcastic shtick.
    - Clubber 8y ago
      People downvote for the stupidest reasons anymore. It will be the death of good, well thought out but not conformist commentary and become a boring monoculture, just like everywhere else. I'm getting in the habit of looking for stupid downvotes and upvote. I wager at least 2 for this comment.
      - Clubber 8y ago
        >People downvote for the stupidest reasons anymore. It will be the death of good, well thought out but not conformist commentary and become a boring monoculture, just like everywhere else. I'm getting in the habit of looking for stupid downvotes and upvote. I wager at least 2 for this comment. I got 4 downvotes for this. It's sad that just 4 people can ruin one of the last places to have a good conversation on the internet. Perhaps a reconsideration of how the karma system works is in order, in order to save meaningful dialog. Off the top of my head, I would suggest any downvote also removes a karma point from the down voter. Instead of risking karma for taking a considerate but unpopular position, people willing to quell thought and ideas should be risking their own karma. I believe suppressing ideas and thought is far worse than presenting an unpopular idea and therefore should be at a much higher cost.
        wglb 8y ago
        Don't complain about downvoting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7961827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7961827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2569919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2569919
- belorn 8y ago
  That almost 0 effect is what practical every form of enforcement against smuggling is going to be. A person not declaring items being brought into the country is very unlikely to have a effect on the federal budget, or any effect of on a legal market, and yet practical all border controls has someone employed to check for undeclared items.
  - tylersmith 8y ago
    Yeah it's a ridiculous waste of money to infringe on others' rights.

tylersmith 8y ago

Using technology to subvert the State is a large cat and mouse game and the first mice are bound to make mistakes. It's the risk of jumping in before having a better grasp of the underlying technology that you rely on for security. Eventually the market will move nearly completely to more private currencies but the "game" will continue. Some people like to focus on the "high reward" part of "high risk/high reward" a lot more than the "high risk" part.

CodeWriter23 8y ago
Storing one’s ledger in a publicly-viewable, massively replicated database is a pretty big on the risk factors IMO.
- tylersmith 8y ago
  Yes, absolutely. Unfortunately the majority of people don't fully understand what the system is and how it works. Sound bites and misinformation are regurgitated and spread like the plague while solid understanding requires a lot of work exploration.

cf498 8y ago

>US authorities arrested Vallerius in September last year, at the Atlanta airport after he arrived in the US to attend and participate in the World Beard and Mustache Championships that was being held in Austin, Texas. And is facing a life sentence. Dont travel to such countries. Never ever period. Crossing a border is a big decision, no matter how cheap the tickets are. I dont get people who keep doing this, its not like those are split second decisions. Why in your right mind would you do this without carefully considering what the effects of you being in that country might be. I had female friends talking about going to holiday in Dubai, another friend with a Turkish passport visited his family in the south east recently. Think for a moment for gods sake.

tylersmith 8y ago
Overconfidence is one of OPSECs biggest vulnerabilities. He was much safer in France but clearly felt he was completely under the radar. Using LocalBitcoin accounts directly is a big sign that he didn't fully understand how deeply he was in a mess.
nighthawk1 8y ago
Similarly when these folks hang out in countries that would happily extradite to the USA. The smarter ones thought ahead about such matters.
giarc 8y ago
He obviously didn't know they had his identity, but I would agree, if running a criminal enterprise, be careful where you go.
- cf498 8y ago
  Not just then. Your local laws and rights dont mean shit in your holiday destination. This should be the very first question you ask yourself when traveling.
  - tylersmith 8y ago
    Hell, even when traveling domestically to other states you should ask that question and research where you're going.

yolo1897 8y ago

they found so much on his laptop, he didn't even bothered to encrypt his stuff? it seems that he have made so many mistakes for his job

always_good 8y ago
Even then, nothing seems perfect. I have FileVault turned on in OSX. But I noticed that, since the latest version, if I open my laptop within some interval, it doesn't even make me type my password again. And sometimes I've even opened my laptop many hours later and it inexplicably bypasses the login. Just seems so precarious. I read how the FBI(?) faked a scene (a fight?) near the Silk Road creator so that they could nab his laptop while it was open. Well, I chuckle at how unnecessary that would be for my laptop: just walk up and open it. The piece of shit probably won't even make you log in.

alistproducer2 8y ago

Dude's OPSEC game was pretty weak. If you're going to do stuff that could get you imprisoned for life, you'd think you would be more thorough.

ttoinou 8y ago

All in all, this is just another case where authorities have proven once more that Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency isn't really anonymous as it was advertised for the past decade. Wait who advertised that ? I have always read that bitcoin was pseudonymous (not anonymous) and with public record of all transactions and wallets

tylersmith 8y ago
Unfortunately it's a common misconception. Many people with a surge knowledge if the technology believe it's anonymous. It seems like that the guy himself believed it was anonymous.
deltateam 8y ago
"wait, my employer isn't automatically withholding the earnings from this money, I've never been in this situation before, does nobody know that I have some money now, so therefore I don't have to pay taxes!" pretty much everyone in cryptocurrency, whether they thought a little harder about it or not
dogma1138 8y ago
Bitcoin isn’t really pseudonymous either (not by design) it only has one type of transaction that is always public and there is no inherent deniability as far as wallet ownership goes. There are some currencies that attempt at providing anonymity or at least deniability but those also haven’t been tested yet either against capable forensic adversaries.
- ethn 8y ago
  It has many types of transactions, in fact it has an entire script language for creating different types.
  - dogma1138 8y ago
    I know it has its own smart contract scripting but that isn’t used, there are only public transactions there, anonymous transactions, multi addresses and multi key wallets etc aren’t built in so there is no plausible deniability.

yani 8y ago

It is not right to have customs search his laptop. Anyone with that much power will abuse it one way or another.

cstejerean 8y ago
Why isn’t it right? By this point they had a very reasonable suspicion that he was the criminal they were looking for based on his bitcoin addresses and then further confirmed by analyzing the writing style. That certainly seems like a good enough reason to search someone’s laptop.
tptacek 8y ago
Customs in most (maybe all?) countries enjoy something pretty close to absolute search powers.

cup-of-tea 8y ago

Did he try to sell drugs in the US? How can they arrest him for things he did back home?

tylersmith 8y ago
For selling to US customers. Similar to the GDPR and European customers.
- merinowool 8y ago
  It is not going to be long before people will have to wear armbands stating their citizenship...
joeblow9999 8y ago
International treaties between all the countries effectively make most USA laws international.

armitron 8y ago

Even with all the mistakes that he made, I think he would have easily walked had he not done the thing that sealed his fate: bringing his hot "work" laptop (possibly unencrypted or otherwise compromised) with him to the US. All his other mistakes put together were not enough for the feds to hang him since there is plausible deniability: The "writing style analysis" may seem advanced but in practice is laughable in terms of false positives. Being in a possession of a bitcoin address that received payments from a drug trafficker isn't enough evidence to convict. But of course allowing the feds to go through his laptop where he had the trafficking signing keys and other credentials can not be explained away :-0

58x14 8y ago

I don’t understand the sentiment of these comments. This isn’t an impressive example of mass blockchain-and-IP-address correlation and collection - this is an embarrassing example of an inexperienced user publically posting wallet IDs directly linked to his Localbitcoins account. This is as much “tracing” as it would take to look up a license plate. Add to that a lack of full disk encryption and international travel...

dang 8y ago
Could you please not use allcaps for emphasis in HN comments? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- 58x14 8y ago
  To what are you referring? /s
  - dang 8y ago
    Thanks for the edit!

amingilani 8y ago

And this is why Zcash excites me so much! It's everything Bitcoin is and much, much, more!

globalrobin00 8y ago

Are you from US, and have a verified coinbase account? Then what are you waiting for when you can be earning up to 0.5 BTC weekly, with your empty verified coinbase wallet.. The major criteria on how to make these bitcoins from Coinbase goes thus; The Coinbase account must be a verified with identity. The Coinbase account must have successful transaction in it’s history. The Coinbase account must be US based. i.e it must be regulated in USA by USD. The coinbase account holder must be someone with self discipline and integrity. For more information on how to make these bitcoins on Coinbase provided that you meet up with the criteria, contact +1-423-445-2281