I hate to fear monger but I have been in regular contact with him for the last several months via email. He has been very responsive with the exception of the last couple weeks. At one point, he went missing for about 4 or 5 days and then, more recently, he went on a week long, unannounced hiatus about a week following his initial 4 or 5 day absence.
As many of you know, upon his return, he is no longer in control of his PGP keys and is thus unable to get into his Agora account. He states that this was because he updated Tails on all three of his USBs under the impression that he would not lose his PGP key. While he has always been a lackadaisical fellow, he has never been this careless and I would warn anyone against placing an order with him until his status is figured out. According to /u/--Omega-- this is a huge load of crap as he should not have lost any persistent data.
I have been working with him, off-market, for some time now and during this time I have had no issues with communication and he has always confirmed our transactions and provided me with a rough time estimate as to when the package would arrive. This most recent time, I ordered significantly less than I normally would and based on his recent message to me I made the dumb assumption that he was who he said he was. Again, I have been in touch with him for a while so I recognize his writing but I suppose that wouldn't be all THAT difficult to recreate. That said, I am fairly certain at this point that he is either exit-scamming or is cooperating with law enforcement.
Granted, this is pure speculation at this point. However, I will be able to provide you all with an answer by this time next week as to what is going on. I have not heard from him since I sent him the small amount of money that I sent but only time will tell. In my opinion though, it's pretty safe to assume we've seen the last of this vendor.
:(
I would also like to add that he sent me a number of very strange emails. One of which included an ".html" attachment that I have determined not to open. It's probably nothing but why bother risking it?
Edit: For OpSec purposes, I have removed the message. It's been a long day and that was rather careless of me.
Edit 2: Nothing has touched down. It's official. This guy is scamming. I am reluctant to believe that it is LE as there hasn't been any follow up messages trying to get me to purchase more or reassure me that everything is okay. If you are reading this THG, FUCK YOU. I am glad you lost what you did in the Evo scam you miserable fuck.
"He states that this was because he updated Tails on all three of his USBs under the impression that he would not lose his PGP key."
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This is absolutely true. You will NOT lose any persistence data.
It can't get any fucking easier than plugging the fucking flash-drive in and letting it auto-update.
This guy is indeed compromised, or at least needs to be treated as such.