I have been studying the realistic risks of ordering from a darknet for awhile and this is the information that i've compiled based on all of the statistics i've found. This is to promote discussion so i can hopefully learn more about the risks mostly because i'm hoping that there are people here that are more knowledgeable than me that may help come to a more definite conclusion. The general attitude in all of darknet market culture is that people almost never get caught or never get caught at all. That had been my attitude for a long time because that was all i saw on the internet, maybe a few stories about a controlled delivery but not enough to ever get me scared. So when I saw gwerns website where he listed all of the known arrests associated with dark net markets at 312 with about 150 being buyers i did some math. So i am a simple man and this will be quite simple too. Silk Road did approximately 1.5 million transactions over the course of about 2.5 years i believe according to 1 site, and since darknet markets have grown in the last three years, lets just say the amount of transactions per year has doubled. so as its been about three years lets just say the amount of total transactions on the deepweb could be very vaguely estimated to be 4.5 million total transactions right?
So if you take 4.5 million and then divide it by 150(the number of buyers who go caught) it would be 30000, not a bad risk at all right? now lets say due to the possibility that most cases never get reported for being a part of silk road and the buyer doesn't go on the internet to report lets just say that 5 more times than gwerns list were arrested, that would put the risk at 6000 or so, still quite reasonable, but then i found a completely different statistic that has really shaken my belief in whether darknet markets are really as safe to buy from as the people on them seem to think.
Now, the thing about these numbers is that they're government numbers and they don't seem to make very much sense whatsoever i'm just doing this to see if anyone who knows more than me can clear up more etc and i'm also posting this because based on government statistics on how many get arrested a year for mailing or receiving drugs then you may come to the conclusion that it's not nearly as safe as we thought.
basically as i read on a magazine grasscity article, there were supposedly 26000 arrests in 2013 related to mailing drugs somehow. the article also states that in 2012 there were 7800 packages opened by usps inspectors containing 42000 pounds of marijuana and that these comprised of 68 percent of the arrests made. also between 2012 and 13 there was a 20% increase in drug mail seized. this is what is bizarre, because for one thing if there were 7800 packages seized then we would have to add in fedex and ups in order to get to the number of 68 percent of packages seized being marijuana out of the 26000 arrests, because if 68 percent of the arrests were made but the amount of packages seized was 7800 the last year then if you multiply that number by 1.2 to count for the %20 increase of mail interception over the past year and then add in fedex and ups data which is unknown(but due to the lack of fourth amendment rights i am sure aren't used nearly as often) you would may still not get to 17680 mail busts which would be 68 percent of 26000. This means that statistically speaking they are unlikely to seize any more than they bust which means by the numbers in that article which are apparently given by the government then literally every package of marijuana seized leads to a controlled delivery and an arrest otherwise those statistics don't match because in order for them to get that many arrests on those many packages seized they'd probably need to get an arrest on literally every one or nearly so because it is highly improbably that they'd seize any more than they arrest according to those numbers. also the average seizure was reported at 5 pounds and i doubt even 1 in 500 darknet market marijuana orders are made of orders of 5lbs or more, so it is unlikely that they are seizing even 1 500th of marijuana orders. and apparently they either never or very rarely look for or open small packages with small amounts which is a good sign for personal users indeed.
What I'm saying is that the numbers do not totally make sense.
Anyway, the main thing though is that although those numbers don't totally make sense, this number of over 26000 people getting caught a year could very well be real and it paints a very different picture of how likely it is that you will be caught ordering drugs on the internet if it is real.
lets just say that we take the 26000 arrests and divide them by 2 and say only half are related to darknet dealings. now, at 13000 a year you would need to multiply it by about 5 to get an accurate number of arrests for all 5 years that there have been darknet markets running very strongly. so lets just say that that number becomes based on the governments statistic, 60000 over a 5 year period due to drug mailing and suddenly rather than 1 in many thousands, you divide the 4.5 million sales by up to 60000 arrests and you'll get that you have a 1 in 75 chance of getting caught ordering drugs online, and this doesn't include the fact that i haven't taken into account that not all of the 4.5 million sales were sales related to the usa.
Now, i am not trying to say that your chance of getting caught buying drugs is 1 in 75 because that seems highly unlikely, and i am not claiming that my math is correct or accurate it was just the best you could do with such limited and contradictory statistics. but the number is probably between the high end using gwerns database and the low end using the govs statistics.
If you think about it the vast majority of people ordering off of darknet markets do not get on forums and talk to people and would never go online and say it if they had been busted, and the vast majority of cases would never make it to the news and say silk road did this etc, the vast vast majority most likely. at this point its practically impossible to know just how risky it is to order drugs online but my guess is that it is actually a lot more risky than people seem to think it is. the idea is that we may not know it because the vast majority of time that people get caught because they do not care about the community aspect and therefore won't come in and post they got busted or anything. they'll just disappear into a jail cell for awhile. it is entirely possible that the amount of reported busts related to darknet markets are less than %10 of the actual busts for all we know.
Anyway, I'm sorry if some of this is wrong or doesn't make sense it's just the best i could do right now, the main reason i'm posting this is so that someone else can come along and shed more light on what i've said and give a more accurate number as a risk.
The important thing to remember is that receiving or sending mail is no simple possession law but is a federal offense because of its association with the post office and it carries much more severe penalties, receiving mdma in the mail is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and there was a case where a man mailed himself marijuana from colorado to texas i believe, 9 pounds worth, and he is now serving 8 to 26 years in prison. So it is important for us to at least try to come up with a real analysis of how much we are risking when we purchase and this really hasn't been done on the internet as far as i can tell. for all we know the actual risk of being caught could be theoretically as low as 1/200(though unlikely) and combine that with multiple deliveries and soon enough you're risking a 1 percent chance at years in a crime college with potentially violent offenders. Not something to take lightly. So i think it's important for someone to come along and come up with a realistic number of just how dangerous it is to order off of darknet markets, because right now none of us seem to know.
Anyway, thank you for reading, that is all i can think of for now, will add more later, if there is anyone who specializes in this kind of research who would know more than me then please post about them so i can message them. Also, if some of this is wrong keep in mind that i am no computer expert and just did the best i could based on the limited data that i could find so please don't treat me too harshly should this not make total sense or something.
Thanks.
Huge wall of information then
"But..all my math could be wrong."