"Man arrested after $220,000 worth of ‘wizard' drug 25i-NBOMe intercepted" (30 September 2014):
A man has been charged with serious drug offences after allegedly ordering almost 11,000 “blotter tabs” — responsible for two deaths in South Australia in 12 months — off the internet. The man, 21, was arrested after a package was intercepted at Sydney Airport after he allegedly ordered about 5000 blotter tabs of the fatal drug, 25i-NBOMe, which has been on the market since 2003. Police searched his Morphett Vale home last Friday, September 26, and allegedly found a further 5700 tabs. The drugs were allegedly sent from Canada and have a street value of about $220,000.
"Alleged N-bomb drug dealer Ryan James Norman runs from court, covering face, after first hearing" (4 November 2014):
Norman, 21, of Morphett Vale, has yet to plead to two counts of trafficking in a large commercial quantity of a controlled drug and one count of possessing a prescription drug...Today James Caldicott, for Norman, asked his client’s case be transferred to the Adelaide Magistrates Court. Norman was remanded on continuing bail until January.
"'Naive' drug trafficker used own name on website now shut down by FBI, Adelaide court hears" (12 June 2015):
A young Adelaide drug trafficker was "naive" enough to use his own name on a buy-and-sell website that since has been shut down by the FBI, a court has heard. Ryan James Norman, 21, imported drugs from Canada, including LSD, via the website Silk Road 2.0...Norman also had ecstasy, and steroids for personal use. He pleaded guilty to seven drugs charges, including trafficking in a commercial quantity of a controlled drug, and the maximum penalty he could face is life in prison. Norman's lawyer Craig Caldicott said his client was a smart young man who was naive when he used his own name on the black market site and express post to send drugs interstate...Mr Caldicott said Norman was active on the now-removed website for about two months. After the sentencing submissions, the court revoked the young man's bail and he was taken into custody ahead of sentencing on a date to be fixed.
The media articles do not specify which SR2 seller. However, checking my late September 2014 crawls of SR2, there is only one seller of NBOMs who claimed to ship domestically in Australia: "MagicAU". MagicAU sold bulk quantities of NBOM (with listings for ~1k), sold LSD, mentions shipping using Express post like Norman, and his profile vanishes from SR2 sometime between my 26 September crawl (the same day Norman was raided) and 28 September, and MagicAU's listings & profile do not reappear for the rest of SR2's lifetime. So, Norman is MagicAU.
What is the 'naive' use of real name here? There seems to be two possibilities:
Norman used unencrypted PMs on SR2 and after SR2 was taken down and imaged by the FBI in November 2014, his outgoing PMs were noted and the information forwarded to Australian police, similar to how PMs seem to have undone PurpleLotus recently. Norman had already been busted by the customs intercept, but that couldn't've helped.
Norman had to be getting his import/restocks from someone and SR2 is the obvious candidate, in which case it is plausible that he sent his name/address unencrypted. However, his profile does not mention sourcing from another SR2 supplier, and this scenario doesn't quite seem to fit with the paraphrase of his lawyer. I don't like this explanation because it requires a lot of claims to be true: that he bought on SR2 at all, that he sent his name unencrypted in a PM, that the PMs got noticed in the post-raid forensic analysis of SR2, that then they got sent to Australian LE for use in his trial, and that his lawyer worded it awkwardly or was referring to something else or was misquoted or something.
Norman's packages literally were linked to his real name somehow, which seems to be the simplest reading of the third media article (what packages was Norman 'send'ing? obviously, packages from MagicAU to his domestic buyers on SR2; what does that have to do with a PM to a hypothetical supplier on SR2? nothing, the name thing is all about his reselling). I assume it wasn't as obvious as writing his name and real address on the return address, otherwise his feedback on SR2 would be extremely negative as repeat buyers noticed, but it probably is more like MDPro: he was using a PO box or had to register personal information somehow to use 'Express post'. This is at least a simple theory. Do any Aussies know what this Express post is and whether there is anything to do with them that is a viable de-anonymization?
We may have to wait for the judge's sentencing decision to happen & be posted online to get more clarity.
Pointer thanks to /u/ShulginsCat
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