Details shared in court:
Reading into this makes me believe some of them are literally retarded. The events that led up to the bust:
They singled out one of them as a vendor/mod
Contacted them about a huge deal with much cash involved and agreed to meet offline
He was asked to verify that he really was vendor/mod during the meeting and did several times.
From that point on he was followed by an offline surveillance unit and had his phone tapped
This led to 4 other people being followed, tapped and investigated in close detail.
The real kicker:
They also talked on the phone, send SMS messages without any code words, they talked about weed, LSD, XTC, MDMA, Coke, Ketamine by their actual substance names, the exact places they mett the amounts they bought and sold, and the money that was changing hands. The police had taps on every single detail between them at any point during the investigation. This almost reads like a CSI episode, can't come up with a more terrible way to go about your OPSEC. Some of the vendors and mods did not even encrypt their PCs......And the servers was hosted at some mods/vendors living room......
If they had even the simplest form of OPSEC. Not talking directly about drugs, locations and amounts on the phone; then most of them would likely be free within 6 months. OPSEC was non-existent for these guys running Utopia and trafficking quite some weight between two countries in the Europe.....
Bet ross wishes he was in germany right now....