How come people have yet to be arrested for the alphabay and hansa shutdowns?

So based on what I have read, both hansa and alphabay got shut down recently. I have been sober mostly for a while now and I have no compromised information at all. The good news is that the law of supply and demand seems to be in place and new sites have come up to replace them both

My question is, why doesn't the government arrest thousands of people? The darknet and drugs seem to be this unspoken thing where only a small sect of the world is part of drug subculture (like members of the shroomery, bluelight, and a handful of subreddits). Even within my friends who do drugs, a very small percentage of them have used the darknet or even fully know about its effects on the worldwide drug market. I am curious about the actual total number of accounts seized from alphabay/hansa. I imagine that it is easily in the few hundred thousand to million range worldwide

From what I know of alphabay, people's encrypted addresses can be found via messages between accounts. If they have brought the site down at the source, it seems like they would have access to then hundreds of thousands of addresses. Hundreds of thousands of people who have bought bitcoins, made accounts on sites for buying drugs, moved those bitcoins to the darknet site, and used that site to purchase drugs (usually domestically, but sometimes internationally).

What more do they need for arrests at this point? Its all there. Names, addresses etc. And if you have hacked the site, you should have access all the accounts, orders, messages between users, public and private keys to decrypt them. Thats seems to be quite a lot of info to work with. Obviously a lot of messages are wiped every 30 days or something I think. but I am sure the sheer about of info that could be used is huge

Most users who were careful encrypted their addresses etc. but thats an irrelevant data point as private and public keys are comprimised

I imagine a few large kingpins have gotten arrested from the busts but it isn't being announced by the media. but I am surprised that people on this site (from what I understand, quite a bit of users here avid darknet users) aren't getting arrested left and right. Why aren't threads popping up about this? "I got a subpeona for drug trafficking, what should I do?" type threads

There are a few popping up with the search function. But much less than I expected given the amount of incriminating info that is now in the DEA's hands

tl:dr; why aren't there more arrests happening from alphabay being shut down? It seems too easy at this point for the govt EDIT: I just realized private keys were not stored so theres that. No real issues here


Comments


[38 Points] ForLol_Serious:

Cause it's all role play


[27 Points] anonymous384:

What's the point in them going after all us users? There's too many of us and it's a waste of their time. Private PGPs aren't stored on the market so I don't think they are able to decrypt anything plus they would need the password too. Just because a site says these people bought these things it is not enough evidence to stand up in court anyway. Without drugs in possession what can they do apart from check future packages?


[14 Points] MagentaIsALie:

Because having your address submitted to a drugs ordering website is not illegal.

They would have to get a warrant for each and every person so they can execute a search in the hopes of finding someone with drugs in their possession.

If you ordered an eight of weed it is not worth the time and money to go through this process only to find you smoked it all or otherwise cleaned house.

Any reasonable prosecutor would find that this arrest, let alone the investigation of such a small order, would not be in the publics interest. And if they did they would soon find themselves out of work for poor usage of budget.


[11 Points] MANIACMATERIAL:

it has lead to arrests, but not very many. i feel they tooted their own horn with the takedown announcements. despite the initial paranoia, it looks like the consequences weren't too bad.


[7 Points] beatenangels:

As far as we are aware all of Alphabay information was encrypted making it useless. Even if it wasn't people should be encrypting thier addresses before sending them to a vendor and AB doesn't have the vendors private keys. Hansa collected a lot of information when under the government's control. Many large scale vendors have been busted. It's not worth the time to go after consumers because anyone can type in anyone name and address and send drugs to them it doesn't prove they actually ordered them.


[4 Points] urstinkinofweed:

A lack of resources could be playing a large part in the lack of action by LE, against what is most likely to be low level drug buyers. The police and court systems here (UK) are already at stretching point, due to cut backs enforced as part of our governments austerity measures.


[4 Points] throwahooawayyfoe:

It took months for the arrest reports to start rolling in from the SR2 seizure. I wouldn't expect any differently for AB and Hansa. We might not see them doing anything right now, but that doesn't mean they're not hard at work.


[4 Points] _PrinterPam_:

  1. It's doubtful they have names/addresses for many, or most, people. Orders placed prior to the servers being compromised may have already been wiped. A decent percentage of people who placed orders afterwards probably used manual encryption.
  2. Names/addresses isn't likely enough proof to snag anyone. They would need more evidence like arranging a CD.
  3. The overwhelming number of buyers don't buy enough to be worthwhile considering the cost of going after them.
  4. If anything, they'd be interested in going after big-time dealers...but that's going to be pretty hard to do (no addresses to speak of).
  5. Shutting down the markets is pretty much their goal, since going after individual buyers/dealers doesn't really accomplish anything. People will keep buying, and as long as they do someone will keep selling. Shutting down markets is a game of Whack-a-mole, but given how much people have freaked out recently...it does have an impact.


[3 Points] 2happytimes2:

Go to deepdotweb (dot) com. People from BOTH sites HAVE been arrested. Just not all of them, doing so would take a lot of resources and innovation. Two things LE is lacking in respect to people on the DN.


[3 Points] beatenangels:

As far as we are aware all of Alphabay information was encrypted making it useless. Even if it wasn't people should be encrypting thier addresses before sending them to a vendor and AB doesn't have the vendors private keys. Hansa collected a lot of information when under the government's control. Many large scale vendors have been busted. It's not worth the time to go after consumers because anyone can type in anyone name and address and send drugs to them it doesn't prove they actually ordered them.


[2 Points] redditgrowthrow:

Major arrests take time to build sufficient evidence and they are almost certainly going to focus limited resources onto the bigger fish. They aren't going to want to simply bust people for dealing and receiving; more likely they're going to try and tack way more charges on (especially given the almost certain presence of money laundering given an income exclusively in digital currencies. I wouldn't be surprised to see a few more major vendors akin to humboldtfarms go down between now and early 2018.

Smaller vendors and people buying weight were probably handed off to local LEO which is a crapshoot and why you see a few small buyers nabbed almost immediately and most essentially forgotten


[2 Points] OldschoollurkerNo4:

Don't assume nobody is getting busted just because they aren't posting here; federal holding is a notoriously difficult place to post to reddit from, and smaller busts aren't very likely to garner media attention. Not to mention the majority of DNM users probably never frequent this place to begin with.

I guess my point is always practice good opsec, never assume you're too small of a fish to attract attention, and understand that none of us (LE cockheads among us notwithstanding) really know what's happening behind the scenes after busts like this.

edit: spelling


[1 Points] DickCheeseKillah:

There's been a good amount of arrests lately. What are you talking about Lil nigga ?


[1 Points] birdtrucker:

Just goes to show, the market doesn't matter. if your opsec is on point and you don't screw up, they can't touch you. Capiche?


[1 Points] Max0kream:

The DEA, any drug task force doesn't go for small fish but the bigger ones.


[1 Points] weeeeee6:

How would they be able to decrypt without private keys? How would they be able to decrypt without password? Why would most users be getting arrested?


[1 Points] iSupportAbortions11:

How do you know no one has been arrested yet?

Just because it's not on page one of this Reddit sub????


[1 Points] None:

Too many users we are talking in the millions so they bother with the big fish. Otherwise they'd appear fascist arresting thousands and trying to justify it by saying well....they ordered drugs so yeah. The average person would then begin questioning the war on drugs.


[1 Points] Dekaayy:

Drug possession isn't cost effective to go after.


[1 Points] Dwqw7fYn6nParH4q6FEV:

OP, don't lie, you had your popcorn ready waiting for some drama go down on the sub and now you are disappointed huh?


[1 Points] SpiffyWhiff:

I think politics stands in the way of large dragnet type operations on end users. I think they fear a public backlash of thousands of people being locked up at once, and I also believe their fear that their political allies(or families or associates) might be in that list of names.


[0 Points] mental_hotline:

I know of an investigation with a growshop that was also dealing. LE got a hold of all customer data and they did visit almost every customer. Mostly this meant low level stuff: paying a visit with a consented search warrant (you can deny access to the police, but that makes you look very suspicious) and a statement at the police office afterwards. Most of the times, no further actions happened because of the fact that most of the buyers are small fish.

But put yourself in their shoes: they have almost certain proof of people involved in drug-related activities. It is their job to check things out. If you are indeed a small time user, they probably won't waste further resources on you. But they might get lucky and catch a bigger fish.

The catch is: this takes time. In the above mentioned case, it took a year to pay everyone a visit. So, if you think you might get a visit, be prepared. They won't bust your door with a SWAT team, but they might check up on you within a year. So if you choose to continue your DNM activities, do it with absolutely pristine and flawless opsec. Leave not a single trace of your activities, don't keep anything in your house etc. I even chose to quit my DNM activities to be sure.