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Tip for Darknet Drug Lords: Don't Wear Latex Gloves to the Post Office

posted by on Wednesday March 22 2017, @02:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the he-didn't-want-to-get-his-hands-dirty dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Delivery is the weakest link in the "dark web" drug trade: the postal habits of a large-scale trader have led to his undoing.

Chukwuemeka Okparaeke is accused of dealing in very nasty stuff: Fentanyl, a high-strength synthetic opioid the Centre for Disease Control says is 50 times the potency of heroin and was responsible for nearly 10,000 deaths in the US in 2015.

Okparaeke may have been a capable Tor user, but his logistical clue needed work: he was caught not because someone linked him to his handle ("Fentmaster", on a site called the AlphaBay Marketplace), but because wearing latex gloves while depositing large numbers of packages at US post offices got the attention of staff.

He was seen at several post offices in the Middletown area of New York, and because he was bulk-buying priority delivery stamps, staff had also viewed his driver's licence.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @03:51AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @03:51AM (#482532)

    What I want to know is where he was getting the fentanyl. Is it safe to assume that he wasn't making it in his bathtub? That leaves sourcing it somehow from one of the pharma manufacturers. Please, cops, follow the money.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @03:54AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @03:54AM (#482533)

    You cannot protect people from their own stupidity, unless you institute tyranny.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @04:18AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @04:18AM (#482538)

      Sorry if that wasn't clear. Yes, I understand that addicts will often do whatever they can to continue being addicted.

      However, pharmaceutical companies are licensed and aren't supposed to be selling to the black market. If the source was one of the big companies (perhaps through a rogue employee) and management ignored the pilferage, the company stands to get into a heap of trouble.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @02:00PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @02:00PM (#482706)

        Meh. Politicians are cheap enough. I wouldn't worry about the law being enforced in such a way that there are negative consequences for big pharma. It only gets enforced in such a way that there are increasing profits for big pharma.

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @05:14AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @05:14AM (#482549)

    10-to-1 odds he bought it in bulk off the darknet himself.
    Maybe from china.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @04:24PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @04:24PM (#482818)

    Fentanyl is usually delivered via patches so I'm guessing that's the kind he had. He could have a crew of people with imaginary pain symptoms and some gullible doctors, it's plausible.