Studying illicit drug trafficking on Darknet markets: Structure and organisation from a Canadian perspective

Abstract

Cryptomarkets are online marketplaces that are part of the Dark Web and mainly devoted to the sale of illicit drugs. They combine tools to ensure anonymity of participants with the delivery of products by mail to enable the development of illicit drug trafficking. Using data collected on eight cryptomarkets, this study provides an overview of the Canadian illicit drug market. It seeks to inform about the most prevalent illicit drugs vendors offer for sale and preferred destination countries. Moreover, the research gives an insight into the structure and organisation of distribution networks existing online. In particular, we provide information about how vendors are diversifying and replicating across marketplaces. We inform on the number of listings each vendor manages, the number of cryptomarkets they are active on and the products they offer. This research demonstrates the importance of online marketplaces in the context of illicit drug trafficking. It shows how the analysis of data available online may elicit knowledge on criminal activities. Such knowledge is mandatory to design efficient policy for monitoring or repressive purposes against anonymous marketplaces. Nevertheless, trafficking on Dark Net markets is difficult to analyse based only on digital data. A more holistic approach for investigating this crime problem should be developed. This should rely on a combined use and interpretation of digital and physical data within a single collaborative intelligence model.

A geographical analysis of trafficking on a popular darknet market

“…the mentioned shipping country and destination(s). Vendor username was used to evaluate the total number of vendors present on a cryptomarket as well as the product category where vendors were the most present [11,17]. Trafficking flows between countries were also obtained using country of origin and destination country.…”

“…The "Goods, currencies and precious metals" category seems to be controlled by Chinese vendors (71.8% of the listings, see Figure 5), while their number (13) is lower than other countries present in the category such as the United States (67), the United Kingdom (31), Germany (17) and Australia (16) (see Figure 4). In particular, they manage almost 99% of all listings classified as "Luxury goods", which mainly consist in watches & jewellery, and 85% of that classified as "Clothes and accessories".…”

“…It was concluded that spatial specificity can be due to different factors affecting countries differently, such as geographic isolation, stringent border controls, relaxed laws in regards to illicit goods, high prices of goods, strict control of internet access, proximity to producing countries, domestic productions of goods and relative availability of illicit goods [8]. Most research on cryptomarkets has focussed on drugs to evaluate the structure of the market [2,10,11], characteristics of vendors [12][13][14], consumers/users' demand [15,16], the investigation of sales volume [11], vendors' activity [17], wholesale vs. retail [18] and the coherence between digital and physical information [19]. In a few words, literature shows that cryptomarkets are dominated by English-speaking countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia) and Western European countries (in particular, the Netherlands) and the main offered and purchased illicit drugs are cannabis, stimulants (cocaine and amphetamines), ecstasy (MDMA) and psychedelics (NPS, LSD) [8,10,16,20].…”

New psychoactive substances (NPS) on cryptomarket fora: An exploratory study of characteristics of forum activity between NPS buyers and vendors

“…The GDS in 2016 reported on a rise in last year cryptomarket purchasing of drugs from 4.5% to 6.7%, with most common drugs including MDMA, cannabis, new or novel substances (including 2C-B and DMT) and LSD. In terms of operational characteristics, cryptomarkets employ advanced encryption in the form of the virtually untraceable cryptocurrency Bitcoin (and others including Litecoin, Dogecoin, Darkcoin); the Onion Router (TOR) service; encryption of private messages, files and emails using the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) cryptosystem to ensure user and administrator anonymity, and sometimes as an option, the Tails or The Amnesiac Incognito Live System (Aldridge & Décary-Hétu, 2016;Bancroft & Scott Reid, 2016;Bright Planet, 2013;Broséus et al, 2016). These protective tools when combined with an escrow and customer feedback system have revolutionised online drug trading (Aldridge & Décary-Hétu, 2014;Martin, 2014a:b;Tzanetakis, Kamphausen, Werse, & von Laufenberg, 2016).…”

Analysis of the Bases of Power of Key Players in the Industry of Novel Psychoactive Substances

“…There are dozens of e-markets of darknet on the deep web; the most popular are AlphaBay, Agora, Nucleus, Valhalla, and HANSA (Broséus et al, 2016;Celestini et al, 2017;Grisham et al, 2016;Wehinge, 2011). Those e-markets and their e-vendors can also be analysed using models of social science.…”