E tt snow rested on the mailbox when the guy came walking over Statoil macken parking. He was wearing dark, wore glasses and had a sparse goatee. A gray hat was pulled down far over his ears. He could not be much older than 25. In his hand he held a plastic bag with a bunch of letters.
The guy looked around before he posted the letters and went back with a deteriorated Mercedes-Benz 200 which appeared to be at least as old as himself. The clock had just been half past eleven when the guy closed the car door and drove on. It was January 19, 2015, from the gray sky seemed tiny snowflakes over Skellefteå.
Facts. Darknet – meeting point on the internet shadow side
Darknet is part of the Internet specially built to keep users and site owners are anonymous.
In practice Tor network, a anonymiseringsteknik which is also used by people in dictatorships to circumvent censorship and surveillance.
Tor can both be used to anonymously visit mainstream websites. But you can also drive all sites within the Tor network, which was then only available to its users. The addresses of those ending in “.onion”.
Darknet and the Tor network is more difficult to navigate because it is not indexed by traditional search engines. Often, one must have access to the complex address of a specific darknet-site to be able to reach it.
Police Scout who followed everything lowered his camera and played up the newly recorded video. Pressed the pause. The youth on the camera display looked back at him through fogged glasses.
The investigator is known among his colleagues as an experienced and attentive. A less experienced police might not have reacted to the guy with the commonplace appearance. When the police went through the film hesitated those anyway.
Could this really be right?
Was this Alexandrus?
D 1:12 August 2003. “the time is quarter to five this Dagens Eko. The Internet has become a gateway to drugs for many young people, and the drug trade over the Internet has increased sharply, according to a report from the National Criminal Investigation Department and the government’s drug coordinator … “
To understand Alexandrus success you also need to understand the change that the drug market has undergone over the past decade. Around the turn of the millennium took the drug trade a big leap from the street onto the internet. During the early 2000s came the word nätdroger more often when politicians, policemen and journalists spoke. By buying and selling drugs online decreased risks for those involved, who could carry out their illegal business anonymously via computer.
But the happiness was relatively short-lived. Several major sites and “pharmacy” has been closed by the police and those involved have been prosecuted.
The usual online is no longer safe for hoses. Therefore, many of them taken another step. They disappeared into the darknet, the part of the Internet that require special encryption software to access.
There is no need for risky encounters between nervous buyers and dealers, no crumpled banknotes shall change hands. Instead, deals are being done up by private chat channels. The drugs are delivered by mail and paid internet currency Bitcoin.
On the darknet, there are a variety of sites – regular marketplaces – for drugs. Most are international, but DN reported this week are Swedish counterparts, despite police attempts to stop them continued to arrange contacts between buyers and sellers of drugs.
V he world’s most famous marketplace darknet was long the site Silk Road which appeared in February 2011. When the FBI closed the two and a half years later, the market place traded close to 1.6 billion, mainly through drug trafficking. The last few days there were up to 14,000 advertisements for drugs for sale.
Silk Roads owners Ross Ulbricht took a percentage of each sale, according to the FBI and became a multimillionaire before his assets were seized. He was arrested Oct. 1, 2013 at a library in San Francisco after an infiltrator had tricked him to log on to the Silk Roads administrator account.
In order to get close to him, pretended the two FBI agents to be a loud brawl spirit of lovebirds – something that distracted Ulbricht long enough that the agents could snatch his computer before he could sign out and cover their tracks.
Facts. This was Nätaliaset Alexandrus
Alexandrus was an alias used by one of the biggest drug dealers on the web for years.
Name first became known on the Silk Road , an international market for illegal goods. It had its heyday a few years ago and was shut down by the FBI in October 2013.
After the Silk Road moved Alexandrus to other forums for drug sales.
According to the FBI and the Swedish police’s summary should Alexandrus have stood behind the 4600 deliveries of drugs.
18 kg hashish and marijuana, 1600 cakes with cannabis, 3000 LSD trips and an unknown amount of MDMA can be connected to the alias, according to the prosecutor. None, however, has been sentenced for all these sales.
He wrote in Swedish, and declared openly that he was a Swedish seller. Some kinds of drugs he just wanted to deliver to addresses within the country.
The drug sites and forums that Flashback Alexandrus hailed as a professional vendors with products of high quality.
the arrest of 29-year-old Ross Ulbricht, a highly educated Texas Guy who held the American scout union’s highest rank, attracted much attention outside drew circles.
– Do not have any doubt, Ulbricht was a drug dealer and a criminal profiteer who exploited people’s dependence and contributed to at least six young people dead, said the prosecutor.
Ross Ulbricht defenders argued instead that the Silk Road was the most responsible drug market in history, partly because it hired a doctor which provided health advice to the site’s users.
Ulbricht was sentenced to life imprisonment. But when the FBI closed the Silk Road, others took over. Sequel Silk Road 2 and several other market places with names like Agora, Evolution and Swedish Flugsvamp shared in 2014 the market amongst themselves.
At the same time started the FBI’s painstaking work to go through tens of thousands of pages of nedsparad data from Ross Ulbricht and the Silk Road to try to identify and map darknets drug dealer.
A name aroused their interest. A previously unknown seller who was behind several thousand items, mainly cannabis.
The seller called themselves Alexandrus, and said he came from Sweden.
D N has gone through the material that was sent from the FBI to the Swedish police. It includes chat logs between Alexandrus and buyers, including several open print their names and home addresses of the Silk Roads encrypted announces service.
Alexandrus respond quickly, accurately and nice as any customer at any time. He put aside drugs to those who have not had time to get their pay, offer compensation to those whose drugs is lost or seized by customs, and compensates those who are not satisfied with their purchase.
“I’m terribly sorry about this unfortunate confusion. I send you a gram Ice-o-lator [very strong hashish, editor's note] without charge, “he writes to a customer who received the wrong drugs sent to him.
” Thanks! It’s amazing service! (…) Definitely one of the best sellers here! 
Among the buyers was based Alexandrus quickly a reputation for being trustworthy. On the drug markets that Silk Road is expected customers to write reviews of suppliers in the same way that takes place on auction sites like Ebay and Tradera. The material from the FBI are tributes documented.
“Alexandrus really won my heart with their products,” writes a buyer. “Good customer treatment, fast delivery and high quality,” promises another. Several praising how discreetly packaged drugs is – “stealth” on the Forum’s own jargon. “I can certainly vouch for this seller.”
D et could have stayed there, with a smaller seizures and perhaps a conviction for minor drug offenses. But when the seizure came back from the state forensic laboratory reached the data also National Operations Department dealing with serious crime in Sweden.
On the basis of data from the FBI knew that there was only a seller who had specialized in the drug-laced cakes – Alexandrus.
Although it was far from any reliable evidence so the police began from that time to work for a new hypothesis: Pusher on the darknet that the FBI had alerted if found themselves somewhere in the Skellefteå area.
Police reconnaissance leader Thomas Palmgren was commissioned to draw up a strategy to capture Alexandrus.
– We started mapping all mailboxes in Skelleftea. It turned out that there were about a hundred. So many scouts, we have not, so we started to guard strategic mailboxes that stood adjacent to large hubs that could be relevant. But that was a bit of a gamble, we had no idea if he would show up, he said.
On 19 January 2015 more than a year after the Silk Road had been closed, was sitting because police spotters outside Statoil in Skelleftea when Björn parked his white Mercedes, took the plastic bag with the package and went to the mailbox. The police recorded the registration number, it is the first time that Bjorn’s name pops up in police computers.
– We make our records checks and sees that he’s past criminal record, no income, and looks to lead a socially and economically sparingly life. It is perhaps not a normal picture of how a major drug trader acting in mainstream society, says Thomas Palmgren.
– But it is clear, in retrospect he fits in well with the prejudice you have data hackers.
the next day the police began to follow Bear and soon noticed that he always brought his computer bag. Soon, even Mark up. During January and February resulted in their car police to the hut and mailboxes around the Skelleftea.
M one suspected how it looked than needed real proof. Police put therefore in the system after each post get into the mailboxes and pick out the letters that Bjorn and Mark posted. In surreptitiously opened the envelopes, the contents – vacuum-packed cannabis, the famous fudge and sometimes LSD doses – were photographed and tested.
Then the police packed into drugs again, förslöt envelopes and sent them to reach their buyers. No less than 329 drug shipments were delivered in this way to their buyers, who were completely unaware that their drugs had just been handled by the police.
The buyers appear to have been regular users, each order is relatively small quantities of drugs . A man in California, born in 1993, got his five doses of LSD in late January. A man in his 40s had marijuana fudge sent to his address in Skåne. A small amount of hashish were allowed to reach a 31 year old man in Uppsala.
To look the other with minor crimes to investigate a coarser called in police language of “interim inaction”. The decision not to stop the trade that was going on in front of the eyes of the police was made by the prosecutor Anders Norberg.
Some options were not, he argues. If the drugs had been seized had Alexandrus understood that someone was on his trail. Perhaps the whole operation have been completed before there was enough evidence to prosecute.
– That we could figure out was to young people, it stopped us anyway, says Anders Norberg.
was not the only trick the police took. In mid-February 2015, the user Skittles74 orders on the trading venue Evolution. A mixture of LSD trips and cannabis were ordered from Alexandrus normal range. As usual, paid for with bitcoin.
The following day jumped Bjorn and Mark once again into the Mercedes. They took one of their usual round and put välförpackade drug supplies in the mailboxes.
But what they did not know was that Skittles74 was not a regular customer, without the police’s own fake account. When Bjorn and Mark packed this order, they contributed to building up the mountain of evidence against themselves. The police could draining mailboxes, go through the envelopes and where to find their own order.
– They went out to ödehuset, packaged order and mailed drugs, says Anders Norberg.
This method is controversial. It balances on the verge of provocation, which is prohibited in Sweden. The police may not ask a suspected drug dealer about to buy drugs to directly seize the one who initiates the transaction. This is because the crime – the elongation – which had never happened. In the case Alexandrus motivates police their drug business with that they were “test purchases”. No one would be prosecuted for this particular sale, but they would help the police to get on track.
D 1:24 February would turn to the police. Then had months of reconnaissance, countless movies, documented shipments, false purchase and intercepted calls have been merged into one act which painted a picture of a huge operation: Several thousand drug shipments worth millions of crowns.
70 -number police had been called in. On a given command would storm the number of addresses in the Skellefteå area. The main raid was made against Bjorn’s residence, a humble rented apartment a bit outside Skellefteå.
Just before four in the afternoon they put in the time. It needed to go fast. A group of police officers went through the door, while the second smashed a window and jumped out. Bjorn, who was in the apartment, was arrested quickly while investigators began searching through the rooms. But it was not in a hurry was due primarily to the suspect was able to escape, it was about the computers. Because they were fitted with heavy encryption, so there was an imminent risk that the content of them would be completely unreadable, even if the police took them seized. The only way was to take them over while Bjorn was logged. A single button or pulled the power cord had been stretched to the hard drives would be locked in encrypted form.
But the police were quick enough. On-site at a low table, next to Bjorn’s bed, could be the police’s IT technicians copy the contents of his hard drives and secure it for an upcoming examination.
It would prove to be a gold mine of evidence. The computer contained everything needed for a comprehensive web-based drug stores. There was the encryption keys for email addresses and passwords to Alexandrus accounts online. There were lists of mailboxes, complete with draining times. In addition, numerous advanced security, all that was needed to communicate anonymously and to sweep their tracks. On the computer, there was also the latest issue of Narcotics Officers Association’s magazine.
– It appeared that Bjorn was very interested in everything that was written in the newspapers and in police investigations work darknet, and police dogs’ ability to find drugs in the letter. He had a great interest in protecting itself, says Thomas Palmgren.
The day after the arrest, police did a new test purchases. But the order from Skittles74 got no answer, and after two weeks was marked order is automatically closed. Alexandrus had fallen silent.
The trial that followed is a typical example of the special situation of evidence that web-based crime brings. To demonstrate how extensive the crime an anonymous screen name has been guilty of one thing. To tie it to a natural person is completely different.
Facts. Drug on Darknet
Anonymity on the darknet has attracted numerous specialized forums for trading in illegal drugs.
They are basically structured in the same way as ordinary purchase and sales sites that block or Ebay.
Sellers show their goods, take orders and are reviewed by the buyers. Whoever gets the praise for good products and fast, discreet delivery can expect more business.
All of cannabis and prescription drugs to heroin and synthetic drugs are offered completely open.
Delivery is almost exclusively by post. The buyer must therefore expose their real name and address of the buyer.
Payment is made with the digital currency Bitcoin, which will complicate linking the transaction to a natural person.
Usually acting drug forum owners middleman and take a percentage of the bitcoin changing hands. These sums can be exchanged for common currencies such as crowns or dollars.
No one doubts that the user “Alexandrus” stood behind about 4600 deliveries of drugs from 2012 to February 2015. a trade turnover of several million, according to the prosecutor.
But Alexandrus was not a man. It was an alias, and an alias can not be folded in court. Several people can stand behind the name. It can be transferred from one person to another. Bjorn and Mark blamed each other and claimed that they stepped into an operation that was already in process.
Although the court found that the Bear, with the help Markus, was the one who had looked Alexandrus trade. The sentence was ten years imprisonment for serious drug offenses and aggravated drug trafficking, while Markus was sentenced to five years in prison. The ruling was appealed and the Court of Appeal reduced Bjorn penalty to eight years in prison.
It is not proven that he pushed Alexandrus longer than since the summer of 2014. As a result of this could also only a small sum of money tied to bear. Of the millions of crowns that total trade must have had a turnover required the two to finish at just 115 000 kronor each.
In addition, Björn and Markus sentenced their goalkeepers for drug offenses in varying degrees. The 32-year-old man who rented out ödehuset them avoided the first to stand trial by fleeing to the mountains. He lived in tents and did burglaries to get supplies before he after a few weeks returned to Skelleftea. There he was recognized, arrested and sentenced to probation for abetting aggravated narcotics offense.
H istorien of Alexandrus had an almost clear end in July 2015. a few weeks after Bjorn and Mark convicted in the district court received a phone call the emergency services. A badgers few mil outside Skellefteå was in flames. When the fire department arrived, the house was already completely engulfed in flames and firefighters were forced to focus on stopping the fire from spreading. Of what once was Alexandrus headquarters remained only soot and ash.
The police suspected that the fire was laid out, but could not find any links to the drug trade. The investigation was closed.
Today sees the police case Alexandrus as a great success. A proof that hoses are not safe even on the Internet with protected sites. Meanwhile, drug trafficking remains a large extent. Alexandrus now used as a cautionary example to other dealers.
“Learn from the preliminary investigation Alexandrus”, telling a drug dealer in a drug markets forum for security.
– It is unfortunately the way it is, back to do a good job is to teach them all the time. The small advantage we have is eaten up, police said Thomas Palmgren.
Footnote: Bear and St. Mark’s really something else.
Illustrations Johan Andersson, Jonas Backlund, Stefan Roth Maier
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