12 ms·

American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged

58 points by Fjolsvith 6y ago

CameronNemo 6y ago
Justice is such a poor way to describe what is happening here. I have full empathy with those who have struggled with opioid addiction or lost loved ones to the disease. But the fact is that opioid prescriptions are still being written with too little oversight, too few safeguards, and not enough support for patients. Withstanding such contradiction in treatment of opioid suppliers, the federal government cannot keep treating opioid abuse on the supply side. We need solutions that focus on patient health and wellness. An opioid on its own does not result in overdoses or abuse, and even moderate use can be balanced with a healthy lifestyle. The DOJ does not have the tools, skills, or experience necessary to address the public health crisis that is opioid abuse.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  The DOJ has a hammer. They’re using that hammer in the only way they can (supply side). If you want the demand side fixed, fix it locally (and lobby the federal government for more funds if necessary). The St Petersburg police department (Florida) recently announced they’d hire 25 social workers instead of 25 police officers to address social needs that would’ve previously been handled suboptimally as a police dispatch. There is evidence local efforts can be made when the appetite and will is present. Having seen opioid addiction up close, I have a hard time not condoning DOJ actions. It’s not perfect, but nothing is.
  - njovin 6y ago
    As long as the US federal government and the DEA continue their ridiculous war on drugs and refuse to reclassify certain substances despite overwhelming popular and scientific support I fear that any action by regular folks is wasted. It’s clear that higher powers prevail and as long as big pharma keeps funneling money into our “Democratic System” logic and reason will lose out to money and influence.
- 263943736 6y ago
  Opioids are among the best medications for treating severe pain. If we're focusing on patients I'd much rather focus on rehabilitative strategies since the current degree of increased scrutiny is already making accessing adequate medication more difficult for groups like the elderly or people with chronic pain. Even more increased oversight is just going to escalate hesitation among doctors.
  - solinent 6y ago
    Opioids don't aid in recovery though--they're not a band-aid, they're simply a veneer. They can prevent recovery since they delays][ physical rehabilitation. I honestly think cannabis is a much better solution long-term, but good luck transitioning an opiate user to cannabis.
    - 263943736 6y ago
      Not being in crippling pain is usually considered a good thing. Sure, some things like a broken arm can probably get by with weed and yes some people respond exceptionally well to weed but there is a night and day difference between the two when it comes to treating most forms of severe pain such as what people with significant spinal trauma experience or what the elderly often (for any number of reasons ultimately relating to age) experience.
      - solinent 6y ago
        I agree (it's meaningless though, I'm just pointing out the obvious above, I'm not an expert here) for acute injury it makes sense to use opioids in severe cases like you mention, however, I think we still need to find the best strains and cultivate them for pain use, we've only scratched the surface with cannabis, it's a big genus. Weed ain't what it used to be. For chronic cases, I think chronic makes a lot of sense. Pain helps you get moving. Opioid's don't. Too much pain is debilitating. Surely we can find a formula here (a very very large one). Cannabis never removes all the pain. I think that's the main feature here.
  - nipponese 6y ago
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  Your comment reminds me of an episode of Joe Rogan with Johann Hari [1], talking about what really causes addiction and the failures of the "war on drugs." He states, "The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection." (18:08) The former U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, declared loneliness an epidemic, and just wrote a book on it [2]. I believe the biggest challenge we face in the United States centers on emotional health. How do we feel? Whom do we trust? Who do we think loves us? How do we rebuild trust? How do we apologize and forgive? How do we grieve? I watched a 60 Minutes episode talking about some of the pharma reps trying to convince doctors to prescribe more opioids [3]. One rep, Alec Burlakoff, had this interchange with the interviewer: > Bill Whitaker: You're preying on these people-- > Alec Burlakoff: Yeah, because they're desperate. They'll try anything. And they may get relief from Subsys initially, But we all know what's gonna happen. We know. We've been doin' this long enough. We know how it ends. > Bill Whitaker: And that is? > Alec Burlakoff: It ends in addiction, withdrawal, pain, suffering, and even death. > Bill Whitaker: And you didn't care about that? > Alec Burlakoff: Back then, I was numb to that. This reminds me that while I often think that the people who feel disconnected are the ones using the opioids, very often the ones selling them also feel disconnected. How did this man get so numb to selling products that he knew were causing so much pain and suffering to others? How did he get so numb in life in general? More importantly, how do we help him feel more alive? I agree, I don't think the Department of Justice, especially with a focus on punishment rather than rehabilitation, can lift us out of this hole. I believe it will require a focus on emotional health, on repairing relationships, on helping us feel less distant, more close, to our friends, family, neighbors, and fellow Americans. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDpjvFn4wgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDpjvFn4wgM [2]: https://www.amazon.com/Together-Connection-Performance-Greater-Happiness/dp/0062913298 https://www.amazon.com/Together-Connection-Performance-Great... [3]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/opioid-epidemic-pharmaceutical-executives-60-minutes-2020-06-21/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/opioid-epidemic-pharmaceutical-...
  - peteretep 6y ago
    > Johann Hari A man whose professional experience is journalist and has no science, medical, public health, or psychotherapy background... and he’s trying to sell a book. Is this too harsh a take? Is there a reason I should be taking his opinion seriously?
- KerrickStaley 6y ago
  > even moderate use can be balanced with a healthy lifestyle Genuinely curious: this doesn't really mesh with my understanding. I think opioids are extremely addictive (more so than tobacco or even cocaine or amphetamine) and as a result it's nearly impossible to be a "casual" user (and therefore I don't ever intend to try any opioids). Is there evidence that opioids can be "moderately" used?
  - GordonS 6y ago
    > as a result it's nearly impossible to be a "casual" user I wonder about the truth of this. I've done a lot of reading at places like Bluelight (for research and curiosity), and it seems there really are a lot of people who set strict guidelines for their drug use and are able to use opioids periodically without addiction.
  - TylerE 6y ago
    They are extremely addictive. No one disputes that. The actual drugs here - I’m talking pure, regulated pharmaceutical versions - are pretty benign physiologically. Constipation is about the worst of it. The combination products (opioid plus something else) are a bit worse - but in those cases it’s the other thing (usually Tylenol) that’s actually hard on your body, especially the liver. Although it’s much less common these days due to all the regulation, many doctors kept a up successful practices for decades while self medicating heavily. What gets people killed are either things sold as other things (e.g. heroin laced with fentanyl, which is much stronger) or propel who quit for a while and then go right back to their old dose and OF because their tolerance is gone.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - CerebralCerb 6y ago
    > Set against a background of assumptions that heroin use is inevitably problematic, there is significant evidence of its controlled use. This paper attempts to draw together the literature on patterns of heroin use which avoid physical and psychological dependence. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1360-0443.1988.tb03035.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1360-0443.... This paper is a great read on the topic. Some suggest more than 50% of heroin users are casual users.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  This is your regular reminder that Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001 and usage did not go up but the health effects and negative societal effects of drug use all but vanished [1]. They went from worst in the EU to among the best in the EU in the decade that followed on pretty much every metric. Addiction has a huge situational component. 20% of US GIs in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. When they returned home 90% of them stopped using heroin overnight, indefinitely [2]. We're doing this all wrong. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radical-drugs-policy-is-working-why-hasnt-the-world-copied-it https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radic... [2] https://jamesclear.com/heroin-habits https://jamesclear.com/heroin-habits
  - remarkEon 6y ago
    This is your regular reminder that extrapolating an outcome from a country like Portugal (an outcome we should all be happy about, by the way) to a country like the United States is unwise. I've never been to Portugal, but have friends that live in both Spain and Portugal and I'm pretty envious of the kind of community and shared identity they describe. I image that probably has something to do with the outcome seen there. So, while I think it's possible to decriminalize all drug use in certain contexts, we've tried this experiment in some US cities and it's not resulted in anything anyone could describe as a success. >Addiction has a huge situational component. Yes, this is exactly what I'm getting at. >20% of US GIs in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. When they returned home 90% of them stopped using heroin overnight, indefinitely [2]. This seems to contradict your previous point, no? In Vietnam there was of course zero enforcement, outside of the military (I'm being charitable here for reasons that should be obvious), and they returned home to a country where the drug was illegal. Edit: very interesting, the negative reaction to this comment. What I said is true, so I can only assume that people who are reacting negatively are doing so because they are projecting a view on me that I do not hold.
    - Implicated 6y ago
      > we've tried this experiment in some US cities and it's not resulted in anything anyone could describe as a success. We have? Can we get a citation on that?
refurb 6y ago
I see Silkroad mentioned, so I’m assuming these were crimes committed years ago? 23,900 bitcoin? That was a big business. No wonder why they were targeted.
- fbi-director 6y ago
  If it truly was at the time of the original silkroad, you have to consider the change in value of btc since then to get a more realistic idea of the size and value of their business. Not saying it wasn't big, no idea, just stating we should consider that fact.
  - ikeboy 6y ago
    2013 - 2018, per indictment
seibelj 6y ago
A victimless crime - unless you think we should be locking up all of the alcohol sellers? Alcohol addiction is a sad, sad affair. I would rather someone be addicted to pharmaceutical grade opioids than street heroin laced with fentanyl and other junk.
- bjo590 6y ago
  > I would rather someone be addicted to pharmaceutical grade opioids than street heroin laced with fentanyl and other junk. The two addictions are more or less the same. Someone addicted to street heroin can substitute pharmaceutical grade opioids. Someone addicted to pharmaceutical grade opioids can substitute street heroin. This is largely a class discrepancy, as the higher tolerance a person has the more expensive the pharmaceutical grade opioid use is compared to street heroin.
  - seibelj 6y ago
    I don't believe I commit any crime when I put any substance of my choice into my own body, regardless of what the state says.
    - techntoke 6y ago
      Right!?! Legalizing drugs would solve a lot of issues and let people actually address and talk about the real problems which is often mental health, however there are a lot of things like mushrooms and LSD that may cause people to "wake up" and not want to be a slave to the system anymore and I think that is mostly what they fear. People realizing they have more choice and power than they've been led to believe.
  - stickfigure 6y ago
    If you actually care about the human behind the addiction, pharmaceuticals are vastly less likely to land your child or loved one in a morgue. Addicts recover all the time, if they live long enough.
  - bgorman 6y ago
fiblye 6y ago
>“These charges are a warning to drug traffickers worldwide that neither the shroud of the darknet or of virtual currency can hide their illegal activities from the vigilance of U.S. law enforcement,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin for the District of Columbia. The real warning to heed here is that we allow some countries to arrest citizens of other countries who committed crimes outside of their borders. I know what extradition is, but the concept of spending your whole life in country A, and having country B decide it's time to arrest you and charge you within their jurisdiction makes me uncomfortable. I think more people will oppose it once global power balances start to shift this century.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  This is already starting to happen. A bunch of countries suspended extradition to Hong Kong after all the recent power consolidation by China because while they trusted an independent Hong Kong to have reasonable limits on its judiciary they do not trust China to do the same; after all this is a country that dismisses "rule of law". And in fact the whole protest situation was caused by Hong Kong's Government introducing a poorly worded extradition bill that would've essentially given carte blanche for Chinese extradition. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/world/asia/hong-kong-extradition-bill.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/world/asia/hong-kong-extr...
  - throw443259 6y ago
    And the reason for the initial bill was due to a Hong Kong citizen murdering his girlfriend in Taiwan. Taiwan and Hong Kong do not have extradition treaties. The murderer is still free in Hong Kong.
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      I mean this was never going to happen anyways because cross-strait relations are fickle and perilous at the best of times, and Taiwan has specifically said that it does not really want to participate in extradition with HK after the whole fiasco. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/world/asia/hong-kong-murder-taiwan-extradition.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/world/asia/hong-kong-murd... The rational response to "hey the country who originally requested the extradition doesn't want to do it anymore" would be to shelve the bill, but at that point the Government and CCP wanted to save face and dug in their heels. Which makes the whole situation an extremely stupid case study of how not to de-escalate a situation.
3131s 6y ago
It's 2020 and if you are still against legalization, or at least decriminalization, you are the enemy. It's no longer incumbent on anyone else to explain to you why the drug war is immoral, prejudiced, and stupid. Violence is exploding all over the country and homicide clearance rates are at an all time low. The irony of what these fat, beer-swilling thugs at the "Department of Justice" and DEA are doing will not be lost on history.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- KMag 6y ago
  I'm all for legalization and harm reduction, but declaring people enemies simply for disagreeing with you is stifling the conversation. Shutting down the conversation locks in the status quo.
  - adventured 6y ago
    It's the with us or against us, ally or enemy, model that is so popular with the faux-woke crowd that is presently ripping the US apart culturally. It's the furthest you can go with virtue signaling, to act militant, aggressive, threatening and to draw up literal enemy lists (those that must be destroyed). This strain/style of virtue signaling is pretty much everywhere on social media now. It also means our current woke party nationally has jumped the shark and is about to run into its first serious cultural pushback (which has already begun, people are overwhelmingly sick of it at a mainstream level).
    - moksly 6y ago
      I’m not sure you can point the blame in just one direction. You see it in any form of radicalisation, once you go too far away from the middle, you start to see others as “the enemy“. I do think that in the terms of the War on Drugs it’s more of a “you support a trillion dollar criminal enterprise” type them vs the rest of society rather than a left vs right issue. If changing political regimes can’t even keep drugs out of prisons, and you see more and more devastation to society and more and more money in the hands of organised crime, then there really isn’t a way around legalisation that isn’t sticking your head in the ground. I get that there is a lot of money, and therefore political incentive, to keep spending money on the parts of organised society that combat drugs, but at some point you gotta ask yourself how much money you want to burn on an enterprise that has never once succeeded in its mission, even if you’re the most tough on crime person out there.
ur-whale 6y ago
It'll be interesting to see if the DOJ manages to confiscate the crypto this time around, and if so how.
- maerF0x0 6y ago
  I'm fairly naive about the details of BTC, but couldnt the network decide to either 1) quarantine those blocks/addresses or 2) Agree to a signature that assigns the value to another wallet?
  - aunty_helen 6y ago
    The problem here (by design) is jurisdiction, the US DOJ doesn't stretch as far as the bitcoin network. As an example, why would someone in Russia stop processing coins because the US DOJ said so? Virtual currencies aren't the battleground for the US's war on drugs.
    - svara 6y ago
      ... because any wallet downstream of the tainted wallet in the transaction graph could be considered tainted as well. This would be a highly effective attack on Bitcoin as an illegal payment method - the onus would be on every Bitcoin user to ensure that they have provably done everything they could to avoid obtaining "illegal bitcoins". Therefore, the person in Russia in your example would have an interest in not dealing with tainted coins, because they couldn't be sold for the same price anymore. It would basically split Bitcoin into white (provably legit), grey (unsure) and black (illegal) coins. Yes, this would probably also destroy Bitcoin, but that's a mechanism by which states could obtain extraterritorial power over what people do with Bitcoin.
      - maerF0x0 6y ago
        This is almost exactly the concept i was thinking of. If the exchanges want to continue to do business in the US they will blocklist the FBI's "suspect" wallets / blocks or something like that...
technonerd 6y ago
There's so many questions left unanswered from this indictment. How did they get his emails, how did they get the bitcoin amount. I'm more interested in the details and opsec failures.

58 points by Fjolsvith 6y ago

Justice is such a poor way to describe what is happening here. I have full empathy with those who have struggled with opioid addiction or lost loved ones to the disease. But the fact is that opioid prescriptions are still being written with too little oversight, too few safeguards, and not enough support for patients. Withstanding such contradiction in treatment of opioid suppliers, the federal government cannot keep treating opioid abuse on the supply side. We need solutions that focus on patient health and wellness. An opioid on its own does not result in overdoses or abuse, and even moderate use can be balanced with a healthy lifestyle. The DOJ does not have the tools, skills, or experience necessary to address the public health crisis that is opioid abuse.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
The DOJ has a hammer. They’re using that hammer in the only way they can (supply side). If you want the demand side fixed, fix it locally (and lobby the federal government for more funds if necessary). The St Petersburg police department (Florida) recently announced they’d hire 25 social workers instead of 25 police officers to address social needs that would’ve previously been handled suboptimally as a police dispatch. There is evidence local efforts can be made when the appetite and will is present. Having seen opioid addiction up close, I have a hard time not condoning DOJ actions. It’s not perfect, but nothing is.
- njovin 6y ago
  As long as the US federal government and the DEA continue their ridiculous war on drugs and refuse to reclassify certain substances despite overwhelming popular and scientific support I fear that any action by regular folks is wasted. It’s clear that higher powers prevail and as long as big pharma keeps funneling money into our “Democratic System” logic and reason will lose out to money and influence.
263943736 6y ago
Opioids are among the best medications for treating severe pain. If we're focusing on patients I'd much rather focus on rehabilitative strategies since the current degree of increased scrutiny is already making accessing adequate medication more difficult for groups like the elderly or people with chronic pain. Even more increased oversight is just going to escalate hesitation among doctors.
- solinent 6y ago
  Opioids don't aid in recovery though--they're not a band-aid, they're simply a veneer. They can prevent recovery since they delays][ physical rehabilitation. I honestly think cannabis is a much better solution long-term, but good luck transitioning an opiate user to cannabis.
  - 263943736 6y ago
    Not being in crippling pain is usually considered a good thing. Sure, some things like a broken arm can probably get by with weed and yes some people respond exceptionally well to weed but there is a night and day difference between the two when it comes to treating most forms of severe pain such as what people with significant spinal trauma experience or what the elderly often (for any number of reasons ultimately relating to age) experience.
    - solinent 6y ago
      I agree (it's meaningless though, I'm just pointing out the obvious above, I'm not an expert here) for acute injury it makes sense to use opioids in severe cases like you mention, however, I think we still need to find the best strains and cultivate them for pain use, we've only scratched the surface with cannabis, it's a big genus. Weed ain't what it used to be. For chronic cases, I think chronic makes a lot of sense. Pain helps you get moving. Opioid's don't. Too much pain is debilitating. Surely we can find a formula here (a very very large one). Cannabis never removes all the pain. I think that's the main feature here.
- nipponese 6y ago
jimkleiber 6y ago
Your comment reminds me of an episode of Joe Rogan with Johann Hari [1], talking about what really causes addiction and the failures of the "war on drugs." He states, "The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection." (18:08) The former U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, declared loneliness an epidemic, and just wrote a book on it [2]. I believe the biggest challenge we face in the United States centers on emotional health. How do we feel? Whom do we trust? Who do we think loves us? How do we rebuild trust? How do we apologize and forgive? How do we grieve? I watched a 60 Minutes episode talking about some of the pharma reps trying to convince doctors to prescribe more opioids [3]. One rep, Alec Burlakoff, had this interchange with the interviewer: > Bill Whitaker: You're preying on these people-- > Alec Burlakoff: Yeah, because they're desperate. They'll try anything. And they may get relief from Subsys initially, But we all know what's gonna happen. We know. We've been doin' this long enough. We know how it ends. > Bill Whitaker: And that is? > Alec Burlakoff: It ends in addiction, withdrawal, pain, suffering, and even death. > Bill Whitaker: And you didn't care about that? > Alec Burlakoff: Back then, I was numb to that. This reminds me that while I often think that the people who feel disconnected are the ones using the opioids, very often the ones selling them also feel disconnected. How did this man get so numb to selling products that he knew were causing so much pain and suffering to others? How did he get so numb in life in general? More importantly, how do we help him feel more alive? I agree, I don't think the Department of Justice, especially with a focus on punishment rather than rehabilitation, can lift us out of this hole. I believe it will require a focus on emotional health, on repairing relationships, on helping us feel less distant, more close, to our friends, family, neighbors, and fellow Americans. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDpjvFn4wgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDpjvFn4wgM [2]: https://www.amazon.com/Together-Connection-Performance-Greater-Happiness/dp/0062913298 https://www.amazon.com/Together-Connection-Performance-Great... [3]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/opioid-epidemic-pharmaceutical-executives-60-minutes-2020-06-21/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/opioid-epidemic-pharmaceutical-...
- peteretep 6y ago
  > Johann Hari A man whose professional experience is journalist and has no science, medical, public health, or psychotherapy background... and he’s trying to sell a book. Is this too harsh a take? Is there a reason I should be taking his opinion seriously?
KerrickStaley 6y ago
> even moderate use can be balanced with a healthy lifestyle Genuinely curious: this doesn't really mesh with my understanding. I think opioids are extremely addictive (more so than tobacco or even cocaine or amphetamine) and as a result it's nearly impossible to be a "casual" user (and therefore I don't ever intend to try any opioids). Is there evidence that opioids can be "moderately" used?
- GordonS 6y ago
  > as a result it's nearly impossible to be a "casual" user I wonder about the truth of this. I've done a lot of reading at places like Bluelight (for research and curiosity), and it seems there really are a lot of people who set strict guidelines for their drug use and are able to use opioids periodically without addiction.
- TylerE 6y ago
  They are extremely addictive. No one disputes that. The actual drugs here - I’m talking pure, regulated pharmaceutical versions - are pretty benign physiologically. Constipation is about the worst of it. The combination products (opioid plus something else) are a bit worse - but in those cases it’s the other thing (usually Tylenol) that’s actually hard on your body, especially the liver. Although it’s much less common these days due to all the regulation, many doctors kept a up successful practices for decades while self medicating heavily. What gets people killed are either things sold as other things (e.g. heroin laced with fentanyl, which is much stronger) or propel who quit for a while and then go right back to their old dose and OF because their tolerance is gone.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- CerebralCerb 6y ago
  > Set against a background of assumptions that heroin use is inevitably problematic, there is significant evidence of its controlled use. This paper attempts to draw together the literature on patterns of heroin use which avoid physical and psychological dependence. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1360-0443.1988.tb03035.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1360-0443.... This paper is a great read on the topic. Some suggest more than 50% of heroin users are casual users.
arcticbull 6y ago
This is your regular reminder that Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001 and usage did not go up but the health effects and negative societal effects of drug use all but vanished [1]. They went from worst in the EU to among the best in the EU in the decade that followed on pretty much every metric. Addiction has a huge situational component. 20% of US GIs in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. When they returned home 90% of them stopped using heroin overnight, indefinitely [2]. We're doing this all wrong. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radical-drugs-policy-is-working-why-hasnt-the-world-copied-it https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radic... [2] https://jamesclear.com/heroin-habits https://jamesclear.com/heroin-habits
- remarkEon 6y ago
  This is your regular reminder that extrapolating an outcome from a country like Portugal (an outcome we should all be happy about, by the way) to a country like the United States is unwise. I've never been to Portugal, but have friends that live in both Spain and Portugal and I'm pretty envious of the kind of community and shared identity they describe. I image that probably has something to do with the outcome seen there. So, while I think it's possible to decriminalize all drug use in certain contexts, we've tried this experiment in some US cities and it's not resulted in anything anyone could describe as a success. >Addiction has a huge situational component. Yes, this is exactly what I'm getting at. >20% of US GIs in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. When they returned home 90% of them stopped using heroin overnight, indefinitely [2]. This seems to contradict your previous point, no? In Vietnam there was of course zero enforcement, outside of the military (I'm being charitable here for reasons that should be obvious), and they returned home to a country where the drug was illegal. Edit: very interesting, the negative reaction to this comment. What I said is true, so I can only assume that people who are reacting negatively are doing so because they are projecting a view on me that I do not hold.
  - Implicated 6y ago
    > we've tried this experiment in some US cities and it's not resulted in anything anyone could describe as a success. We have? Can we get a citation on that?

refurb 6y ago

I see Silkroad mentioned, so I’m assuming these were crimes committed years ago? 23,900 bitcoin? That was a big business. No wonder why they were targeted.

fbi-director 6y ago
If it truly was at the time of the original silkroad, you have to consider the change in value of btc since then to get a more realistic idea of the size and value of their business. Not saying it wasn't big, no idea, just stating we should consider that fact.
- ikeboy 6y ago
  2013 - 2018, per indictment

seibelj 6y ago

A victimless crime - unless you think we should be locking up all of the alcohol sellers? Alcohol addiction is a sad, sad affair. I would rather someone be addicted to pharmaceutical grade opioids than street heroin laced with fentanyl and other junk.

bjo590 6y ago
> I would rather someone be addicted to pharmaceutical grade opioids than street heroin laced with fentanyl and other junk. The two addictions are more or less the same. Someone addicted to street heroin can substitute pharmaceutical grade opioids. Someone addicted to pharmaceutical grade opioids can substitute street heroin. This is largely a class discrepancy, as the higher tolerance a person has the more expensive the pharmaceutical grade opioid use is compared to street heroin.
- seibelj 6y ago
  I don't believe I commit any crime when I put any substance of my choice into my own body, regardless of what the state says.
  - techntoke 6y ago
    Right!?! Legalizing drugs would solve a lot of issues and let people actually address and talk about the real problems which is often mental health, however there are a lot of things like mushrooms and LSD that may cause people to "wake up" and not want to be a slave to the system anymore and I think that is mostly what they fear. People realizing they have more choice and power than they've been led to believe.
- stickfigure 6y ago
  If you actually care about the human behind the addiction, pharmaceuticals are vastly less likely to land your child or loved one in a morgue. Addicts recover all the time, if they live long enough.
- bgorman 6y ago

fiblye 6y ago

>“These charges are a warning to drug traffickers worldwide that neither the shroud of the darknet or of virtual currency can hide their illegal activities from the vigilance of U.S. law enforcement,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin for the District of Columbia. The real warning to heed here is that we allow some countries to arrest citizens of other countries who committed crimes outside of their borders. I know what extradition is, but the concept of spending your whole life in country A, and having country B decide it's time to arrest you and charge you within their jurisdiction makes me uncomfortable. I think more people will oppose it once global power balances start to shift this century.

bobthepanda 6y ago
This is already starting to happen. A bunch of countries suspended extradition to Hong Kong after all the recent power consolidation by China because while they trusted an independent Hong Kong to have reasonable limits on its judiciary they do not trust China to do the same; after all this is a country that dismisses "rule of law". And in fact the whole protest situation was caused by Hong Kong's Government introducing a poorly worded extradition bill that would've essentially given carte blanche for Chinese extradition. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/world/asia/hong-kong-extradition-bill.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/world/asia/hong-kong-extr...
- throw443259 6y ago
  And the reason for the initial bill was due to a Hong Kong citizen murdering his girlfriend in Taiwan. Taiwan and Hong Kong do not have extradition treaties. The murderer is still free in Hong Kong.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    I mean this was never going to happen anyways because cross-strait relations are fickle and perilous at the best of times, and Taiwan has specifically said that it does not really want to participate in extradition with HK after the whole fiasco. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/world/asia/hong-kong-murder-taiwan-extradition.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/world/asia/hong-kong-murd... The rational response to "hey the country who originally requested the extradition doesn't want to do it anymore" would be to shelve the bill, but at that point the Government and CCP wanted to save face and dug in their heels. Which makes the whole situation an extremely stupid case study of how not to de-escalate a situation.

3131s 6y ago

It's 2020 and if you are still against legalization, or at least decriminalization, you are the enemy. It's no longer incumbent on anyone else to explain to you why the drug war is immoral, prejudiced, and stupid. Violence is exploding all over the country and homicide clearance rates are at an all time low. The irony of what these fat, beer-swilling thugs at the "Department of Justice" and DEA are doing will not be lost on history.

deleted 6y ago
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KMag 6y ago
I'm all for legalization and harm reduction, but declaring people enemies simply for disagreeing with you is stifling the conversation. Shutting down the conversation locks in the status quo.
- adventured 6y ago
  It's the with us or against us, ally or enemy, model that is so popular with the faux-woke crowd that is presently ripping the US apart culturally. It's the furthest you can go with virtue signaling, to act militant, aggressive, threatening and to draw up literal enemy lists (those that must be destroyed). This strain/style of virtue signaling is pretty much everywhere on social media now. It also means our current woke party nationally has jumped the shark and is about to run into its first serious cultural pushback (which has already begun, people are overwhelmingly sick of it at a mainstream level).
  - moksly 6y ago
    I’m not sure you can point the blame in just one direction. You see it in any form of radicalisation, once you go too far away from the middle, you start to see others as “the enemy“. I do think that in the terms of the War on Drugs it’s more of a “you support a trillion dollar criminal enterprise” type them vs the rest of society rather than a left vs right issue. If changing political regimes can’t even keep drugs out of prisons, and you see more and more devastation to society and more and more money in the hands of organised crime, then there really isn’t a way around legalisation that isn’t sticking your head in the ground. I get that there is a lot of money, and therefore political incentive, to keep spending money on the parts of organised society that combat drugs, but at some point you gotta ask yourself how much money you want to burn on an enterprise that has never once succeeded in its mission, even if you’re the most tough on crime person out there.

ur-whale 6y ago

It'll be interesting to see if the DOJ manages to confiscate the crypto this time around, and if so how.

maerF0x0 6y ago
I'm fairly naive about the details of BTC, but couldnt the network decide to either 1) quarantine those blocks/addresses or 2) Agree to a signature that assigns the value to another wallet?
- aunty_helen 6y ago
  The problem here (by design) is jurisdiction, the US DOJ doesn't stretch as far as the bitcoin network. As an example, why would someone in Russia stop processing coins because the US DOJ said so? Virtual currencies aren't the battleground for the US's war on drugs.
  - svara 6y ago
    ... because any wallet downstream of the tainted wallet in the transaction graph could be considered tainted as well. This would be a highly effective attack on Bitcoin as an illegal payment method - the onus would be on every Bitcoin user to ensure that they have provably done everything they could to avoid obtaining "illegal bitcoins". Therefore, the person in Russia in your example would have an interest in not dealing with tainted coins, because they couldn't be sold for the same price anymore. It would basically split Bitcoin into white (provably legit), grey (unsure) and black (illegal) coins. Yes, this would probably also destroy Bitcoin, but that's a mechanism by which states could obtain extraterritorial power over what people do with Bitcoin.
    - maerF0x0 6y ago
      This is almost exactly the concept i was thinking of. If the exchanges want to continue to do business in the US they will blocklist the FBI's "suspect" wallets / blocks or something like that...

technonerd 6y ago

There's so many questions left unanswered from this indictment. How did they get his emails, how did they get the bitcoin amount. I'm more interested in the details and opsec failures.