Using a throwaway account, but having worked with several users on reddit who are freaked out about some recent incidents based on posts here, its time to talk about the cool new way people are scamming on this sub. Extortion!
There sometimes appears a post on here which advertises all kinds of products and the way to order, typically through tor or safemail. From what I can gather, several users have gone ahead and placed an order with these posters. Here's what happens next, and we'll take the example of /u/Pillboxy as he is the latest scammer to try and pull this on our users.
The transaction begins normally with the poster pretending to be a seller.
The buyer contacts the seller and sends the BTC and address, via PGP, privnote or unencrypted, for this scam it doesn't matter.
'Something' happens or the transaction gets confused on the scammer's side, and they let the user know about this. Often at this point the scammer will ask for a phone number for verification and to give an update. They scammer will then call and pretend to be DEA or something else in order to catch the user off guard.
The scammer then google's the user (as they do have their real name/address) and writes a long email saying essentially "You work at X company, you know these people (if they can access your facebook publically) and it would be a shame to be taken down by a felony drug charge [insert made up drug charge here]. If you are cooperative hopefully we won't have to alert the authorities."
The scammer makes it very clear to avoid actually saying they are with any specific agency (FBI, DEA) but may hint at the fact that they are an undercover agent in a vague way, and that the buyer may be in big trouble.
At this point, the scammer, having freaked out the buyer, will ask the buyer to pay a fine "to make this all go away", or else he will send all this information to the FBI/come to his house and the user's life will be ruined.
This is a mashup of a few stories I've been told by other redditors, but most of the details were the same, so make sure that you understand that REDDIT IS NOT A SAFE PLACE TO CONTACT ANYONE FOR ANYTHING, ESPECIALLY ILLEGAL THINGS.
There is a new game in town and if you get someone telling you they are vaguely associated with law enforcement and that you are in trouble, you need to let the mods know at once, and hopefully post a throwaway with the name of the user and what happened. What these users are doing is a much bigger crime (impersonating a federal officer) than buying a little bit of weed, they have a lot more to lose, although it seems they are mainly in another country.
In fact, the actual DEA recently put out this notice which essentially describes exactly what some people have figured out they could pull on the users of our subreddit: http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/pubs/pressreleases/extortion_scam.htm
I hope you upvote this for visibility and maybe the mods can sticky it as well. I get the feeling that this is only the start. Remember, anonymity is key, and if you do need to get something, remember the worst case scenario and decide if its worth it.
Yeah, the DEA always shows up in person when they are going to steal your money.