WEBVTT 00:00:00.120 --> 00:00:01.120 JACK: Hey! 00:00:01.120 --> 00:00:02.850 Hi, I’m Jack, and I’m back. 00:00:02.850 --> 00:00:08.099 I took a three-month break; I really needed it, but it’s springtime now, so yeah, it’s 00:00:08.099 --> 00:00:11.330 time to come out of hibernation and get back to work, so let’s do this. 00:00:11.330 --> 00:00:15.690 Oh, and from now on, you can expect new episodes of the show to come out on the first Tuesday 00:00:15.690 --> 00:00:16.690 of every month. 00:00:16.690 --> 00:00:22.189 [INTRO MUSIC] In this episode, we get into a story about darknet marketplaces. 00:00:22.189 --> 00:00:23.960 That means listener discretion is advised. 00:00:23.960 --> 00:00:28.130 We’re certainly gonna get into drugs this episode and who knows what else, so let’s 00:00:28.130 --> 00:00:32.469 just say this one is rated R, and this is your warning. 00:00:32.469 --> 00:00:40.550 (INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC] These are true stories from the dark side of the internet. 00:00:40.550 --> 00:00:45.800 I’m Jack Rhysider. 00:00:45.800 --> 00:00:49.440 This is Darknet Diaries. 00:00:49.440 --> 00:00:56.609 [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] 00:00:56.609 --> 00:01:04.530 JACK: So, let’s start out with your name. 00:01:04.530 --> 00:01:08.830 [CROSSTALK] So, what do you want to be known for – known as on here as well? 00:01:08.830 --> 00:01:10.869 Because you may want a moniker or something. 00:01:10.869 --> 00:01:12.210 SAM: Oh, no. 00:01:12.210 --> 00:01:13.550 So, my name is Sam Bent. 00:01:13.550 --> 00:01:15.670 It’s a matter of public record. 00:01:15.670 --> 00:01:26.670 Also mostly known as DoingFedTime online and killab; that was my hacker alias for a while. 00:01:26.670 --> 00:01:34.020 Also 12189082, which is almost like talking to Jean Valjean, but that’s – so, that 00:01:34.020 --> 00:01:35.210 was my fed number. 00:01:35.210 --> 00:01:37.649 So, that’s – I got a couple aliases. 00:01:37.649 --> 00:01:41.780 JACK: Okay, well, maybe that gave the story away a little bit, but whatever. 00:01:41.780 --> 00:01:46.240 Now you know Sam spent some time in federal prison, and honestly, sometimes when I talk 00:01:46.240 --> 00:01:51.000 with criminals on this show, I get a little nervous and have to lay down some boundaries. 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:55.500 I’m assuming your criminal spree is over, but I do not… 00:01:55.500 --> 00:01:56.500 SAM: It is. 00:01:56.500 --> 00:02:00.110 JACK: …want to know about any future things you may be cooking up that may be illegal… 00:02:00.110 --> 00:02:01.110 SAM: Nah. 00:02:01.110 --> 00:02:02.870 JACK: …because it puts me in an awkward spot, but… 00:02:02.870 --> 00:02:05.030 SAM: Yeah, definitely not, definitely not. 00:02:05.030 --> 00:02:12.540 Just us like – even if I had mentioned something to you, federally you are literally part of 00:02:12.540 --> 00:02:18.940 a conspiracy now and you can get up to ten years, so I take it very seriously. 00:02:18.940 --> 00:02:23.450 Even when I was incarcerated, I would have guys who would walk up to me and they’d 00:02:23.450 --> 00:02:26.190 be like, oh, when I get out I’m gonna sell coke right this time. 00:02:26.190 --> 00:02:28.300 I’d be like, listen, mate, get the fuck away from me, you know? 00:02:28.300 --> 00:02:33.680 What is wrong with you, you dumb – like, you’re guaranteed to come back, you know? 00:02:33.680 --> 00:02:37.349 It’s like, I don’t want to hear anything about any of that. 00:02:37.349 --> 00:02:39.340 So, I absolutely understand that. 00:02:39.340 --> 00:02:46.700 That’s great that you have that mindset of, you know, don’t try to involve me in 00:02:46.700 --> 00:02:47.700 anything. 00:02:47.700 --> 00:02:51.640 JACK: [MUSIC] Okay, so when Sam was in his twenties, he was living in Vermont and was 00:02:51.640 --> 00:02:53.200 getting good at computers. 00:02:53.200 --> 00:02:56.870 He had a job fixing computers for a while, and then he started a little business doing 00:02:56.870 --> 00:02:58.730 computer repair for other people. 00:02:58.730 --> 00:03:04.560 Now, as Sam got more into technology, of course he noticed and heard things like Silk Road 00:03:04.560 --> 00:03:09.319 and darknet marketplaces and Tor and Bitcoin, because when you’re a tech enthusiast, you 00:03:09.319 --> 00:03:11.330 go and you check these things out. 00:03:11.330 --> 00:03:19.040 SAM: I had had this exposure to cryptocurrencies and to the darknet in general for a long time 00:03:19.040 --> 00:03:24.030 because I had been in information technology and cyber security. 00:03:24.030 --> 00:03:29.720 I did a lot of residential work, mainly, but I was always – that was always kind of my 00:03:29.720 --> 00:03:33.000 thing. I loved computers. 00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:36.930 I remember when Silk Road had came out; I honestly – I thought it was a scam. 00:03:36.930 --> 00:03:44.310 I thought it was a bunch of feds that ran it and it was just a big – it was just a 00:03:44.310 --> 00:03:47.409 big sting operation. 00:03:47.409 --> 00:03:51.080 Then as time went on and I learned a little bit more about it, I realized it wasn’t. 00:03:51.080 --> 00:03:55.560 JACK: Silk Road was a website on the darknet that let you buy and sell drugs – among 00:03:55.560 --> 00:03:57.939 other things – illegal drugs. 00:03:57.939 --> 00:04:01.470 The whole thing was anonymized so it protects buyers and sellers. 00:04:01.470 --> 00:04:04.980 That way the police would have a hard time finding who the users were. 00:04:04.980 --> 00:04:09.880 An interesting use of technology, but Sam didn’t really care about Silk Road at all. 00:04:09.880 --> 00:04:13.380 He was not interested in buying drugs from it or selling drugs on it. 00:04:13.380 --> 00:04:17.520 So, Sam was in his twenties and had a girlfriend for ten years that he was living with. 00:04:17.520 --> 00:04:20.669 SAM: We were arguing about peas. 00:04:20.669 --> 00:04:24.870 My daughter got – ‘cause I had two step-daughters and a son. 00:04:24.870 --> 00:04:29.880 I had made them dinner and when I had given them dinner, my ex was like, oh, you gave 00:04:29.880 --> 00:04:30.880 her too many peas. 00:04:30.880 --> 00:04:32.320 I was like, I don’t think so. 00:04:32.320 --> 00:04:36.450 She was like, you know – and she’s like, oh, well, you obviously did; look at the plate. 00:04:36.450 --> 00:04:39.250 I was like, well, it’s the same number of scoops. 00:04:39.250 --> 00:04:40.770 She’s like, you’re an asshole. 00:04:40.770 --> 00:04:45.389 I’m a logician; like, my personality type is INTP, so I’m a logician. 00:04:45.389 --> 00:04:47.690 So, I don’t really get emotionally invested. 00:04:47.690 --> 00:04:49.229 So, I was like, I disagree. 00:04:49.229 --> 00:04:50.229 I think you’re wrong. 00:04:50.229 --> 00:04:54.100 It’s the same amount of scoops, as the other kid’s. 00:04:54.100 --> 00:04:59.540 So, it really aggravated her and she basically told me – she was like, I cheated on you 00:04:59.540 --> 00:05:01.840 seven years ago. 00:05:01.840 --> 00:05:07.940 [MUSIC] She was a super-miserable person for those seven years because her guilt ate at 00:05:07.940 --> 00:05:10.830 her, and she would take that out on everyone else. 00:05:10.830 --> 00:05:15.550 She would basically never be home and when she was, she was just a nightmare to deal 00:05:15.550 --> 00:05:16.550 with. 00:05:16.550 --> 00:05:19.539 So, when she ended up telling me that, I was like, awesome. 00:05:19.539 --> 00:05:27.560 This is my chance to basically tell her to go to hell, and I used that opportunity to 00:05:27.560 --> 00:05:29.720 break up with her. 00:05:29.720 --> 00:05:34.919 But living in rural Vermont and doing these small computer jobs, I definitely didn’t 00:05:34.919 --> 00:05:35.919 make a ton of money. 00:05:35.919 --> 00:05:37.289 It was my own company. 00:05:37.289 --> 00:05:39.510 It was called Worldwide Computer Consultants. 00:05:39.510 --> 00:05:41.930 It was a startup. 00:05:41.930 --> 00:05:45.580 I didn’t have a ton of money, so I was like, well, I need to make money. 00:05:45.580 --> 00:05:52.430 If I want to move out and I want to have a good house for my children to live in, I need 00:05:52.430 --> 00:05:55.080 at least two hundred grand. 00:05:55.080 --> 00:06:01.130 JACK: Okay, so we’ve all been in this situation, right, where life throws us a curveball and 00:06:01.130 --> 00:06:03.389 suddenly we need money? 00:06:03.389 --> 00:06:08.330 Maybe not two hundred grand, but still, I can relate to being in a bad spot where money 00:06:08.330 --> 00:06:12.610 can fix a lot of my problems, but I have no idea how I’m gonna get it. 00:06:12.610 --> 00:06:17.590 Not only does he need money, but breakups are hard to go through, especially after being 00:06:17.590 --> 00:06:19.349 with someone for ten years. 00:06:19.349 --> 00:06:25.289 [MUSIC] Sometimes when we break up with someone, we have a tendency to go back to our old ways. 00:06:25.289 --> 00:06:29.539 So, what were Sam’s old ways? 00:06:29.539 --> 00:06:35.210 SAM: [MUSIC] Prior to living in Vermont, I had lived in Rhode Island, and prior to living 00:06:35.210 --> 00:06:37.539 in Rhode Island, I lived in Massachusetts. 00:06:37.539 --> 00:06:44.199 So, like most people, they move from these states for whatever reasons; economic reasons, 00:06:44.199 --> 00:06:46.000 job opportunities, right? 00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:48.190 So, I was in Massachusetts. 00:06:48.190 --> 00:06:52.770 I caught my first case; it was assault and battery with intent to murder. 00:06:52.770 --> 00:06:53.840 JACK: Geez, dude. 00:06:53.840 --> 00:06:58.690 I don’t know the full story of what happened here, partially because Sam never told the 00:06:58.690 --> 00:07:00.190 police everything, either. 00:07:00.190 --> 00:07:03.100 What I do know is that he was seventeen at the time and there were two other guys who 00:07:03.100 --> 00:07:04.680 were also part of this. 00:07:04.680 --> 00:07:07.669 Everyone ran, and Sam was the only one who got caught. 00:07:07.669 --> 00:07:12.190 Anyway, this landed Sam in jail for a while, and while he was there he was sent to the 00:07:12.190 --> 00:07:16.849 SHU a few times – solitary confinement – one for possessing a lighter because he’s a 00:07:16.849 --> 00:07:21.060 smoker and one for making a knife to defend himself in case another inmate attacked him. 00:07:21.060 --> 00:07:24.750 In this period of his life, he was a drug user, and when he got out of jail, he even 00:07:24.750 --> 00:07:27.560 got charges for possessing marijuana. 00:07:27.560 --> 00:07:31.440 He got into some more serious drugs and moved out of Massachusetts to Rhode Island. 00:07:31.440 --> 00:07:37.729 SAM: I had been in Rhode Island for a while, and when I lived in Rhode Island, I sold – it’s 00:07:37.729 --> 00:07:44.290 been way over the statute of limitations at this point, but I sold coke, powdered cocaine, 00:07:44.290 --> 00:07:46.159 and weed and stuff. 00:07:46.159 --> 00:07:50.370 I moved up to Vermont ‘cause I was like – I was tired of doing that kind of stuff 00:07:50.370 --> 00:07:56.210 ‘cause it’s a rough life, you know? 00:07:56.210 --> 00:07:57.639 It’s no joke. 00:07:57.639 --> 00:07:58.900 So, I moved up to Vermont. 00:07:58.900 --> 00:08:01.660 I moved up to Vermont, I got my high school diploma. 00:08:01.660 --> 00:08:05.300 From there I continued on, and – with my education. 00:08:05.300 --> 00:08:08.190 When I came up to Vermont, I couldn’t turn a computer on. 00:08:08.190 --> 00:08:11.539 If you were like, turn this computer on, I wouldn’t be able to turn it on. 00:08:11.539 --> 00:08:14.889 I couldn’t reformat one, I couldn’t de-frag a hard drive. 00:08:14.889 --> 00:08:15.889 I couldn’t do anything. 00:08:15.889 --> 00:08:17.530 I didn’t know anything about it. 00:08:17.530 --> 00:08:24.740 So, I spent the next ten years educating myself about computers and technology. 00:08:24.740 --> 00:08:32.169 JACK: So, Sam’s old ways was a lot of drug-related stuff and even running from the law. 00:08:32.169 --> 00:08:38.589 Sam has learned a lot since then, specifically that there are now online drug marketplaces. 00:08:38.589 --> 00:08:43.960 Old Sam was about to catch up with new Sam. 00:08:43.960 --> 00:08:48.950 Silk Road, the leading darknet market, was raided and shut down by the feds in 2013, 00:08:48.950 --> 00:08:51.920 but this didn’t make darknet marketplaces go away. 00:08:51.920 --> 00:08:56.459 No, Silk Road was replaced with like, four other markets, and people just flocked to 00:08:56.459 --> 00:08:57.459 those. 00:08:57.459 --> 00:09:02.550 When Sam was going through this breakup in 2017, a popular market at the time was Hansa. 00:09:02.550 --> 00:09:07.880 [MUSIC] Sam was particularly fascinated by this site, so he spent long nights reading 00:09:07.880 --> 00:09:12.250 through many listings and posts on there, trying to learn as much as he could about 00:09:12.250 --> 00:09:14.500 darknet marketplaces. 00:09:14.500 --> 00:09:22.720 SAM: So, I had hopped on their site and I was on their site for a while, and I started 00:09:22.720 --> 00:09:24.690 making posts. 00:09:24.690 --> 00:09:29.670 How I ended up establishing my name was just helping as many people as I could and calling 00:09:29.670 --> 00:09:32.110 out the people that I knew were scammers. 00:09:32.110 --> 00:09:37.829 So, you had a ton of people, obviously, that are on that forum or any darknet forums that 00:09:37.829 --> 00:09:44.519 are trying to get people to conduct transactions with them outside of the Esper system. 00:09:44.519 --> 00:09:50.400 So, if someone’s like, oh, I’m looking for this vendor; he had a pound of weed – hypothetically 00:09:50.400 --> 00:09:52.560 – he had a pound of weed for twelve hundred bucks. 00:09:52.560 --> 00:09:58.060 You’d see some shark come in and be like, oh, I have this weed and I bought it in bulk 00:09:58.060 --> 00:10:00.580 and I’ll sell it to you for six hundred bucks a pound. 00:10:00.580 --> 00:10:02.750 This guy is just a random person. 00:10:02.750 --> 00:10:04.160 Like, you’re never gonna get anything. 00:10:04.160 --> 00:10:05.630 He’s there to rob you. 00:10:05.630 --> 00:10:09.670 He might even be a fed and he’s just there to try to get your address, you know? 00:10:09.670 --> 00:10:15.029 He’ll rob you too, but he’ll get your address, too. 00:10:15.029 --> 00:10:17.040 So, I used to call those people out. 00:10:17.040 --> 00:10:19.670 Like, if you’re – if you said that to someone on the forum – you’re like, oh, 00:10:19.670 --> 00:10:24.130 I can beat his price, I’m like, you don’t have that vendor star or you can’t prove 00:10:24.130 --> 00:10:25.640 that you’re a legit vendor. 00:10:25.640 --> 00:10:31.810 Like, you can’t provide assigned PGP message saying you’re vendor XYZ from this market. 00:10:31.810 --> 00:10:35.100 I would be like, dude, you’re a fucking fraud. 00:10:35.100 --> 00:10:37.750 You’re trying to rip this dude off, you know? 00:10:37.750 --> 00:10:41.390 They used to hate that ‘cause I would call them out. 00:10:41.390 --> 00:10:49.340 [MUSIC] I made 5,000 posts in a month on Hansa, and that was how I established my name. 00:10:49.340 --> 00:10:54.529 Hansa came out with a policy where they were like, listen, you can’t post on our forums 00:10:54.529 --> 00:10:56.490 unless you’re a buyer or a vendor. 00:10:56.490 --> 00:10:59.520 JACK: At this point, Sam was neither a buyer or seller. 00:10:59.520 --> 00:11:02.140 SAM: So, I was like, son of a bitch. 00:11:02.140 --> 00:11:07.631 So, there was a big carder; he was like, listen, man, I know you been on the forums, you do 00:11:07.631 --> 00:11:08.690 a lot of good. 00:11:08.690 --> 00:11:12.640 He was like, if you – are you gonna buy something? 00:11:12.640 --> 00:11:14.570 That way you can stay on the forums. 00:11:14.570 --> 00:11:20.620 I was like, well, I understand Bitcoin, I understand all that, but I’m not completely 00:11:20.620 --> 00:11:26.830 sure yet that if I hop on LocalBitcoins that I can buy Bitcoins and have it be completely 00:11:26.830 --> 00:11:29.410 anonymous, and for me that’s a major risk. 00:11:29.410 --> 00:11:33.670 To me, it was like, it’s not worth the cost of being able to post on the forums. 00:11:33.670 --> 00:11:34.670 So, I was like, oh, it’s a bad hit. 00:11:34.670 --> 00:11:36.660 I’m not gonna be able to post on the forums. 00:11:36.660 --> 00:11:42.880 He was like, no, man, I’ll send you some Bitcoin and just buy a – technically, that 00:11:42.880 --> 00:11:47.430 was my first purchase on the darknet, was a stolen credit card. 00:11:47.430 --> 00:11:49.500 So, he had sent me the money for it. 00:11:49.500 --> 00:11:53.370 I had bought it off him as 2happytimes. 00:11:53.370 --> 00:11:57.230 Then once I bought it, I was now a buyer, so I could talk on the forums. 00:11:57.230 --> 00:12:00.040 So, I’m like, yeah, I solved that problem. 00:12:00.040 --> 00:12:01.160 That’s awesome. 00:12:01.160 --> 00:12:04.410 So, I sent him his stolen credit card number back. 00:12:04.410 --> 00:12:06.230 I was like, here, man, I don’t need this. 00:12:06.230 --> 00:12:07.889 I’m not gonna do anything with it. 00:12:07.889 --> 00:12:09.400 I’m good, you know? 00:12:09.400 --> 00:12:13.930 So, I was like, sweet; now I can post on the forums, though. 00:12:13.930 --> 00:12:20.389 So, I kept posting on the forums and then about a month or so later, it was like, I 00:12:20.389 --> 00:12:22.220 wanted to become a vendor. 00:12:22.220 --> 00:12:30.510 So, I go to become a vendor and he was like, hey, listen, man, if you want to become a 00:12:30.510 --> 00:12:34.831 vendor, I’ll front you that two hundred bucks to do it ‘cause I know you don’t 00:12:34.831 --> 00:12:39.221 want to go buy Bitcoin and you’re – he called me paranoid about it. 00:12:39.221 --> 00:12:42.079 I was like, yeah, alright, that’s awesome. 00:12:42.079 --> 00:12:45.019 Yeah, I appreciate you sticking your neck out. 00:12:45.019 --> 00:12:48.440 It’s two hundred bucks and he probably makes that in an hour. 00:12:48.440 --> 00:12:50.190 But I thought that was really cool. 00:12:50.190 --> 00:12:54.829 JACK: Hansa required something like $200 be paid if you wanted to create a vendor account, 00:12:54.829 --> 00:12:58.690 and now that he had this, [MUSIC] Sam was all set to start a new chapter in his life 00:12:58.690 --> 00:13:02.690 as a darknet market vendor. 00:13:02.690 --> 00:13:03.930 He didn’t jump right into it, though. 00:13:03.930 --> 00:13:06.120 He was very cautious about everything. 00:13:06.120 --> 00:13:11.490 For one, he knew a lot about opsec, or how to remain private online, from his knowledge 00:13:11.490 --> 00:13:13.370 of cyber security and computers. 00:13:13.370 --> 00:13:19.690 But then, having spent months reading thousands of posts on Hansa really helped him get embedded 00:13:19.690 --> 00:13:22.060 into the darknet market culture. 00:13:22.060 --> 00:13:27.560 This is a tough culture to pierce; there’s little trust in some areas and a lot of trust 00:13:27.560 --> 00:13:32.750 in others, which makes it feel like you’re part of a criminal family at times. 00:13:32.750 --> 00:13:37.750 He had made friends and connections and started a reputation without even buying or selling 00:13:37.750 --> 00:13:39.100 a single item. 00:13:39.100 --> 00:13:43.670 He made some observations during that time; number one, nobody uses their real name on 00:13:43.670 --> 00:13:44.670 the darknet. 00:13:44.670 --> 00:13:47.480 In fact, everyone is trying hard to hide from their real identity. 00:13:47.480 --> 00:13:52.690 Number two, you can assume everyone is a criminal or a federal agent. 00:13:52.690 --> 00:13:58.190 Three, the feds are actively looking to take down the criminals, and he would pay attention 00:13:58.190 --> 00:14:01.209 to all those methods on how the feds were catching people. 00:14:01.209 --> 00:14:04.829 So, other people’s missteps became his rules to live by. 00:14:04.829 --> 00:14:07.870 Do you remember what you sold for – at first? 00:14:07.870 --> 00:14:10.930 SAM: Yeah, so, it was moonshine and cannabis. 00:14:10.930 --> 00:14:12.980 JACK: But where were you getting the cannabis? 00:14:12.980 --> 00:14:15.250 SAM: I was growing it. 00:14:15.250 --> 00:14:20.420 Yep, so I had imported seeds from the EU. 00:14:20.420 --> 00:14:26.730 I had gotten some Master Kush seeds and I refined them. 00:14:26.730 --> 00:14:33.089 I had studied – so, I had studied botany for probably about fifteen years, so I went 00:14:33.089 --> 00:14:39.020 – I taught myself about macro nutrients, micro nutrients, deep-water cultures, ScrOGs, 00:14:39.020 --> 00:14:46.620 all this kinda stuff; aeration and nutrient deficiencies and how to tell nutrient deficiencies 00:14:46.620 --> 00:14:48.250 in plants. 00:14:48.250 --> 00:14:54.970 So, I had learned all this stuff and I had wanted to cultivate cannabis for the longest 00:14:54.970 --> 00:14:55.970 time. 00:14:55.970 --> 00:14:56.970 JACK: Yeah, how’d it go on Hansa? 00:14:56.970 --> 00:14:59.100 How was your first dip into the vendor pool? 00:14:59.100 --> 00:15:04.660 SAM: Yeah, so, I want to say on the first week I made about three hundred bucks, then 00:15:04.660 --> 00:15:07.890 the second week it was probably about $500. 00:15:07.890 --> 00:15:13.829 [MUSIC] So, it was definitely – it was a slow start, but had I not spent that month 00:15:13.829 --> 00:15:18.190 making those posts, I would have had no sales. 00:15:18.190 --> 00:15:23.699 JACK: His big idea was that he really wanted to be the manufacturer and seller. 00:15:23.699 --> 00:15:26.459 His theory was that this is how you could maximize your profits. 00:15:26.459 --> 00:15:31.840 SAM: So, I’m like, you know, if I’m the manufacturer and I’m the retailer, my ROI 00:15:31.840 --> 00:15:33.130 will be insane. 00:15:33.130 --> 00:15:44.620 So, with my moonshine, I could spend $10 to $14 and I could turn that into $100 at a minimum. 00:15:44.620 --> 00:15:51.880 Then if I made apple pie brandy from that, multiply that by five, and that was my return, 00:15:51.880 --> 00:15:53.250 was five hundred bucks. 00:15:53.250 --> 00:15:59.110 JACK: Now, Sam was trying to be business savvy, too, trying to find ways to cut costs. 00:15:59.110 --> 00:16:01.720 Like, shipping supplies can easily start adding up. 00:16:01.720 --> 00:16:08.060 SAM: So, for me, one thing I came to find out was that USPS – on their website, you 00:16:08.060 --> 00:16:10.870 can order free supplies, right? 00:16:10.870 --> 00:16:17.649 So, if you want bubble wrap, instead of buying bubble wrap from Amazon with your credit card, 00:16:17.649 --> 00:16:24.060 having it sent to your house and going through a ton of it, you can order envelopes from 00:16:24.060 --> 00:16:27.500 USPS or pick them up in person, right? 00:16:27.500 --> 00:16:34.650 Now you don’t have a credit card purchase for one less of your shipping supplies, anyway. 00:16:34.650 --> 00:16:41.880 Then I would take – I would order generic catalogs that were really big like Grainger 00:16:41.880 --> 00:16:47.880 that had 500 to 2,000 pages in them, and I would tear out the pages, crumple them up 00:16:47.880 --> 00:16:49.430 into a ball, and throw them in there. 00:16:49.430 --> 00:16:53.430 I would pack it – so, there’s no packing peanuts, so now I don’t have to buy that 00:16:53.430 --> 00:16:55.050 on Amazon. 00:16:55.050 --> 00:16:59.540 I would make sure that my – ‘cause whatever you’re sending out, that’s one end that 00:16:59.540 --> 00:17:00.630 you can get popped. 00:17:00.630 --> 00:17:04.650 But you buying supplies is just as dangerous, right? 00:17:04.650 --> 00:17:07.360 So, all – you have to factor in all those things. 00:17:07.360 --> 00:17:12.449 If you can factor those things in and make sure that they have no overhead, even better, 00:17:12.449 --> 00:17:14.289 ‘cause now you’re more profitable. 00:17:14.289 --> 00:17:19.780 JACK: He also made a lot of very careful steps just to get onto the Hansa darknet market. 00:17:19.780 --> 00:17:23.800 Like, when you get on social media, chances are you just turn on your phone or your computer 00:17:23.800 --> 00:17:27.010 and you’re already logged into the site, just like where you were before. 00:17:27.010 --> 00:17:31.760 But you don’t want to do that with darknet marketplaces, because suppose you get caught 00:17:31.760 --> 00:17:36.440 by the cops and they take your computer and open it and they can just see that you’re 00:17:36.440 --> 00:17:38.340 logged in as a vendor on the site? 00:17:38.340 --> 00:17:41.250 [MUSIC] That’s some smoking evidence that they’d have on you. 00:17:41.250 --> 00:17:45.450 So, Sam would try to hide his tracks so that it looked like he was never even on a darknet 00:17:45.450 --> 00:17:48.590 marketplace to begin with. 00:17:48.590 --> 00:17:53.280 For one, he would never use his home internet connection to do illegal things online. 00:17:53.280 --> 00:17:57.409 He lived up on a hill, and so, he pointed his antenna down the hill towards the neighbor’s 00:17:57.409 --> 00:18:00.530 house and was able to figure out a way to get onto their network. 00:18:00.530 --> 00:18:05.679 He used the Tails Linux operating system, which has some extra security features. 00:18:05.679 --> 00:18:09.960 But the thing about the Tails operating system is that it gets completely wiped every time 00:18:09.960 --> 00:18:14.770 you reboot or shut down and has no memory of what you’ve done before, which means 00:18:14.770 --> 00:18:19.429 every morning when Sam needed to log in and check his orders, he would have to reload 00:18:19.429 --> 00:18:25.850 Tails and re-enter his PGP key and his Bitcoin key and do all that in order to authenticate 00:18:25.850 --> 00:18:27.460 and do business on the site. 00:18:27.460 --> 00:18:34.220 But here’s another problem; having possession of those two private keys would prove to the 00:18:34.220 --> 00:18:36.520 feds that he’s the vendor on the site. 00:18:36.520 --> 00:18:43.380 So, he needed to protect those keys very well, and he stored them both on a little USB flash 00:18:43.380 --> 00:18:44.380 drive. 00:18:44.380 --> 00:18:50.700 SAM: I would have my flash drive that I would always keep on me, and I kept it on me because 00:18:50.700 --> 00:18:57.140 first off, you have to figure – I’m a moonshiner, so there’s 170 proof alcohol 00:18:57.140 --> 00:18:59.400 around me at all times. 00:18:59.400 --> 00:19:06.750 So, it’s possible for me at any time to take this flash drive out of my pocket, pour 00:19:06.750 --> 00:19:12.870 170 proof alcohol on it and light it and hopefully melt it to a point where it can’t be recovered. 00:19:12.870 --> 00:19:14.860 But really, obviously, that’s not a guarantee. 00:19:14.860 --> 00:19:20.919 It’s not like I have thermite sitting around, even though that was an idea of mine at one 00:19:20.919 --> 00:19:21.919 point. 00:19:21.919 --> 00:19:25.210 JACK: Also because he lived up on a hill, he could watch and see if anyone was coming 00:19:25.210 --> 00:19:26.659 for quite a ways away. 00:19:26.659 --> 00:19:32.090 SAM: I would do regular perimeter checks, so – probably four a day. 00:19:32.090 --> 00:19:36.760 I would walk around, I would look through almost every window in the house and just 00:19:36.760 --> 00:19:39.260 kinda look at what was going on outside, you know? 00:19:39.260 --> 00:19:41.240 Was there a car parked down the street? 00:19:41.240 --> 00:19:44.909 There were times where I saw a car parked down the street. 00:19:44.909 --> 00:19:46.760 Yeah, there’s a ton of stuff. 00:19:46.760 --> 00:19:52.300 I wouldn’t have a cell phone and I wouldn’t – if you had a cell phone and you somehow 00:19:52.300 --> 00:19:58.299 knew me and I knew you well enough where I trusted you enough to come to my house, your 00:19:58.299 --> 00:20:00.559 cell phone stays in the car. 00:20:00.559 --> 00:20:01.559 JACK: Dang. 00:20:01.559 --> 00:20:03.900 Things get really intense when you’re a darknet market vendor. 00:20:03.900 --> 00:20:06.830 Friends aren’t allowed to bring cell phones to your house and you have to always have 00:20:06.830 --> 00:20:10.650 a plan in the back of your mind on how to burn the USB stick that you’re always carrying 00:20:10.650 --> 00:20:11.770 with you all the time. 00:20:11.770 --> 00:20:16.309 We’re gonna take a quick commercial break, but stay with us because despite all this 00:20:16.309 --> 00:20:20.930 planning and safety precautions, something goes seriously wrong. 00:20:20.930 --> 00:20:25.370 What about – which carrier do you use? 00:20:25.370 --> 00:20:26.659 SAM: Oh, for packages? 00:20:26.659 --> 00:20:27.860 JACK: Yeah. 00:20:27.860 --> 00:20:29.650 SAM: USPS only. 00:20:29.650 --> 00:20:30.850 JACK: Why? 00:20:30.850 --> 00:20:35.290 SAM: Because it’s run by the federal government, which means they require a warrant to open 00:20:35.290 --> 00:20:36.760 it. 00:20:36.760 --> 00:20:42.549 If you ship DHL, UPS, FedEx – any of those are private companies. 00:20:42.549 --> 00:20:49.429 They can open your package at will, whereas with USPS, they require a warrant and they 00:20:49.429 --> 00:20:54.870 need reasonable suspicion with probable cause in order to apply for that search warrant 00:20:54.870 --> 00:20:59.090 and have the federal judge sign off on their ability to even open that package. 00:20:59.090 --> 00:21:02.870 JACK: [MUSIC] Okay, so for the government to open your package, they need reasonable 00:21:02.870 --> 00:21:04.900 suspicion and probable cause. 00:21:04.900 --> 00:21:07.130 Hm. So, what’s that? 00:21:07.130 --> 00:21:10.929 What does the government think a suspicious package looks like? 00:21:10.929 --> 00:21:13.950 Well, this is obviously something Sam wanted to know. 00:21:13.950 --> 00:21:19.279 SAM: Making a package safe to ship was actually – it was kinda difficult because they try 00:21:19.279 --> 00:21:27.049 to make it as generic as possible so that they can classify almost any package as suspicious. 00:21:27.049 --> 00:21:32.470 So, if you use, quote, unquote, “too much tape” – what’s too much tape? 00:21:32.470 --> 00:21:33.470 Well, that’s arbitrary. 00:21:33.470 --> 00:21:34.580 It’s up to them. 00:21:34.580 --> 00:21:40.450 So, if you use too much tape, if you have a fake return address, if you have a handwritten 00:21:40.450 --> 00:21:46.309 address, if it’s not an official USPS box. 00:21:46.309 --> 00:21:47.700 Right? 00:21:47.700 --> 00:21:52.259 All of these; a fraudulent return address, a fake sender address. 00:21:52.259 --> 00:21:58.060 All of these things culminate to create a suspicious package. 00:21:58.060 --> 00:22:07.510 Then pairing them together makes it so you can add up these individual variables to make 00:22:07.510 --> 00:22:13.730 it something where now you can say you have probable cause and plead that case to a federal 00:22:13.730 --> 00:22:18.100 judge and hopefully give – he’ll grant you a warrant to open it up. 00:22:18.100 --> 00:22:21.970 JACK: Now, when you have all these packages that you need to ship out, it becomes a big 00:22:21.970 --> 00:22:22.970 task. 00:22:22.970 --> 00:22:25.700 You can’t just hand them all to the mail carrier who’s coming to your house. 00:22:25.700 --> 00:22:30.080 You need to somehow anonymously send them without a way for them to be traced back to 00:22:30.080 --> 00:22:31.080 you. 00:22:31.080 --> 00:22:34.360 So, a public mailbox on the street corner might be good. 00:22:34.360 --> 00:22:37.100 You could just put the stamps on it and put it in there. 00:22:37.100 --> 00:22:40.919 But that’s kinda hard to do when you’ve got a bottle of moonshine that you’re trying 00:22:40.919 --> 00:22:42.230 to ship. 00:22:42.230 --> 00:22:46.000 But the thing is is you just don’t want to put all your letters in one mailbox, either, 00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:48.890 or make one mailbox the one that you always use. 00:22:48.890 --> 00:22:53.150 Sam was already really busy making moonshine, growing cannabis, and packaging everything 00:22:53.150 --> 00:22:54.679 up and dealing with the orders. 00:22:54.679 --> 00:23:01.780 SAM: I don’t have time to ship packages, so I had reached out to my cousin. 00:23:01.780 --> 00:23:06.039 So, I contacted my cousin who, at the time, lived in Rhode Island and she worked at a 00:23:06.039 --> 00:23:07.039 dead-end job. 00:23:07.039 --> 00:23:10.900 I said hey, listen, I got a plan. 00:23:10.900 --> 00:23:14.260 Do you want to come up for a weekend and I’ll talk to you about it? 00:23:14.260 --> 00:23:20.549 She drove up that weekend and I told her – ‘cause I’m not gonna talk about selling drugs on 00:23:20.549 --> 00:23:23.409 the internet over the phone, you know? 00:23:23.409 --> 00:23:29.700 [LAUGHS] I had told her about it and I said, listen, how it’ll be is like, I will pay 00:23:29.700 --> 00:23:36.820 you a certain percentage; 5% of whatever I’m shipping out, 5% of that profit margin for 00:23:36.820 --> 00:23:40.920 that package is yours, plus a standard fee. 00:23:40.920 --> 00:23:49.130 We’ll do, like, $5 a package, plus the percentage, plus gas money, all the expenses, car payments. 00:23:49.130 --> 00:23:52.679 We had a spare bedroom so if she wanted, she could live there. 00:23:52.679 --> 00:23:57.120 So, she had – very well taken care of. 00:23:57.120 --> 00:24:03.750 Plus unlimited alcohol, moonshine, weed, shrooms, ecstasy, acid. 00:24:03.750 --> 00:24:08.460 Basically whatever you want, you can take. 00:24:08.460 --> 00:24:11.510 So, that was kinda the arrangement that I had. 00:24:11.510 --> 00:24:17.910 Then she would go and I would – in the morning I would wake up, I would check my orders, 00:24:17.910 --> 00:24:25.380 I would print out addresses on thermal labels – because thermal labels don’t use microprinting, 00:24:25.380 --> 00:24:28.910 which means my IP address won’t be on that label. 00:24:28.910 --> 00:24:31.080 JACK: Okay, so I want to pause here and just do a little fact-check. 00:24:31.080 --> 00:24:37.020 It’s true that printers typically put some dots on every page they print. 00:24:37.020 --> 00:24:41.860 These are almost invisible and these dots mainly go unnoticed by most people. 00:24:41.860 --> 00:24:47.520 This is presumably to track the paper back to which printer printed it, but it’s not 00:24:47.520 --> 00:24:50.860 exactly certain what information is encoded in those little dots. 00:24:50.860 --> 00:24:55.149 I don’t think your IP address shows up in it, but it’s more like a little signature 00:24:55.149 --> 00:24:57.520 of which printer it came from. 00:24:57.520 --> 00:25:01.919 I think this is to help law enforcement trace counterfeit money to see if it came from the 00:25:01.919 --> 00:25:02.919 same origin. 00:25:02.919 --> 00:25:07.090 So, while it’s probably smart to not use a printer that does this, I’m not sure how 00:25:07.090 --> 00:25:10.380 effective this step was to actually hide his tracks. 00:25:10.380 --> 00:25:15.610 SAM: For me, I would – I bought a thermal printer because with a thermal printer, it 00:25:15.610 --> 00:25:21.980 doesn’t use ink; it uses thermal paper and there’s no microprinting with those. 00:25:21.980 --> 00:25:28.720 So, in the morning I would wake up, I would print out – like, let’s say I’m sending 00:25:28.720 --> 00:25:30.240 you half a pound of weed. 00:25:30.240 --> 00:25:37.180 I print out your address and on the back of it I write ‘half a pound of weed’. 00:25:37.180 --> 00:25:41.780 The package of a half a pound of weed, I have it sealed up in my clean room. 00:25:41.780 --> 00:25:49.070 I have my fake return addresses, slap it on there, and I slap a destination address on 00:25:49.070 --> 00:25:54.130 that box and I throw away the back side of the label which says ‘half a pound’. 00:25:54.130 --> 00:25:58.480 So, one of the things my cousin was concerned about – she was like, if I’m sending out 00:25:58.480 --> 00:26:03.140 these packages and the FBI fingerprints them, they’ll see my fingerprints. 00:26:03.140 --> 00:26:06.140 I was like, yeah, it’s true. 00:26:06.140 --> 00:26:08.640 It’s not false; it’s true. 00:26:08.640 --> 00:26:13.640 She was like, well, that’s kind of an issue, right? 00:26:13.640 --> 00:26:17.400 I was like, no, ‘cause at the end of the day, if you’re at the post office and you 00:26:17.400 --> 00:26:23.520 touch a box, you have – you still have plausible deniability, right? 00:26:23.520 --> 00:26:30.590 Now, if your fingerprints are inside one of those – the plastic that seals the drugs 00:26:30.590 --> 00:26:35.100 or on the inside of the box, not so much. 00:26:35.100 --> 00:26:41.399 So, for me, I would seal the package – ‘cause I’m working with it on the inside of it. 00:26:41.399 --> 00:26:46.500 I would seal it and I would have two or three pairs of latex gloves on. 00:26:46.500 --> 00:26:53.640 I bleached the area that I did it in on a regular basis to make sure there’s no DNA. 00:26:53.640 --> 00:26:58.870 Like, there’s a ridiculous amount of stuff that goes into this – and then actually 00:26:58.870 --> 00:27:00.110 packaging it up. 00:27:00.110 --> 00:27:04.429 So, let’s say I’m packaging up just an ounce of weed. 00:27:04.429 --> 00:27:10.270 I’m taking a sandwich bag, I’m putting the cannabis in there, I’m sealing it up, 00:27:10.270 --> 00:27:14.470 getting the air out as best I can, and then I’m taking that and I’m wiping it down 00:27:14.470 --> 00:27:17.809 with rubbing alcohol with a new pair of gloves. 00:27:17.809 --> 00:27:23.529 I would stick it inside a vacuum seal bag, I would vacuum-seal that bag, and then I would 00:27:23.529 --> 00:27:28.760 dip that whole bag in a solution of rubbing alcohol, let it dry off, then I would seal 00:27:28.760 --> 00:27:30.039 it in another bag. 00:27:30.039 --> 00:27:36.160 Then the last bag that I would seal it in would be what’s called a visual barrier. 00:27:36.160 --> 00:27:42.100 A visual barrier is just a – it’s a vacuum seal bag that’s a solid color so you can’t 00:27:42.100 --> 00:27:43.100 see through it. 00:27:43.100 --> 00:27:49.490 So, I would vacuum-seal this last bag and I – off my thermal printer I would print 00:27:49.490 --> 00:27:55.080 off a label that says ‘Organic Dried Fruit’ and I would slap it on that visual barrier. 00:27:55.080 --> 00:28:01.610 Now, if I hand this to you, you look at it and you squeeze it, it feels like dried fruit 00:28:01.610 --> 00:28:04.000 but you can’t see it ‘cause of the visual barrier. 00:28:04.000 --> 00:28:09.860 So, if law enforcement or a postal employee was curious about what was in a box and stepped 00:28:09.860 --> 00:28:14.070 on the box to look inside of it, like oh, it was an accident; we didn’t – we stepped 00:28:14.070 --> 00:28:19.760 on the box by accident, you can step on this box all day and that visual barrier is not 00:28:19.760 --> 00:28:24.170 gonna – it’s a visual barrier, so you could literally open the box and what you’re 00:28:24.170 --> 00:28:26.220 seeing is just this thing that says ‘Organic Dried Fruit’. 00:28:26.220 --> 00:28:32.821 You have to open this box and cut through this two-mil-thick-plastic in order to get 00:28:32.821 --> 00:28:38.049 the other plastic out, and even then, it’s still so opaque that you can’t see what 00:28:38.049 --> 00:28:39.140 it actually is. 00:28:39.140 --> 00:28:42.110 So, you have to go through all these layers to see what it actually is. 00:28:42.110 --> 00:28:46.350 Now, the reason I would do that is because you have a thing called permeation. 00:28:46.350 --> 00:28:51.799 So, I could take a pound of weed, I can put it in a bag, I can stick it in a PVC pipe, 00:28:51.799 --> 00:28:58.500 and I can stick it in a block of concrete, stick that block of concrete in a gas tank, 00:28:58.500 --> 00:29:03.620 and if I leave it there for long enough, a drug-sniffing dog will smell that smell of 00:29:03.620 --> 00:29:10.570 that cannabis through the metal of the gas tank, the gas in the tank, the concrete, the 00:29:10.570 --> 00:29:14.940 PVC pipe, and the plastic bag because it permeates out, right? 00:29:14.940 --> 00:29:17.950 ‘Cause nothing in this world is actually solid. 00:29:17.950 --> 00:29:22.640 It’s all held together by atoms but nothing is technically solid, right? 00:29:22.640 --> 00:29:28.250 Even the inside of an atom is comprised of basically nothing, right, but empty space. 00:29:28.250 --> 00:29:32.620 So, permeation goes through everything and anything. 00:29:32.620 --> 00:29:34.740 Some substances it takes longer. 00:29:34.740 --> 00:29:39.210 Now, mind you, I don’t have to put it in concrete or steel or any of this crazy stuff 00:29:39.210 --> 00:29:45.750 that you see a lot of the cartels do that are shipping large quantities because at the 00:29:45.750 --> 00:29:50.130 end of the day, I use two to three-day shipping, you know? 00:29:50.130 --> 00:29:56.970 It’s sealed in four layers, so it doesn’t have time to permeate those bags in order 00:29:56.970 --> 00:30:01.730 for a dog to be able to smell it, and I can assure you there’s no microscopic residue 00:30:01.730 --> 00:30:05.780 on the outside of it because I’ve changed my gloves and I’ve killed whatever it is 00:30:05.780 --> 00:30:11.429 with rubbing alcohol and completely cleaned it multiple times on that same package. 00:30:11.429 --> 00:30:15.169 JACK: [MUSIC] Okay, there’s one more precaution to take around the shipping labels. 00:30:15.169 --> 00:30:21.000 SAM: So, every three packages would have a different return address because one of the 00:30:21.000 --> 00:30:25.860 alerts for law enforcement is a fraudulent return address. 00:30:25.860 --> 00:30:33.860 So, I had to find a database of legitimate return addresses and – me, like – if you’re 00:30:33.860 --> 00:30:39.690 an honest guy, right, like you’re an honest citizen, you – nine-to-five guy, you don’t 00:30:39.690 --> 00:30:42.840 break the law, you’re not evil that I know. 00:30:42.840 --> 00:30:50.810 So, I didn’t want to send out a bunch of coke with Jack’s return address because 00:30:50.810 --> 00:30:53.559 if I did that, it might not be the best thing. 00:30:53.559 --> 00:30:59.960 Department of Homeland Security busts down your door at 6:00 AM, you miss work or someone 00:30:59.960 --> 00:31:03.929 tells your boss about how they saw you getting raided, you lose your job. 00:31:03.929 --> 00:31:05.309 What are you gonna say? 00:31:05.309 --> 00:31:06.720 Oh, I didn’t do it? 00:31:06.720 --> 00:31:08.270 Everyone says that. 00:31:08.270 --> 00:31:14.530 The stigma, the trauma that your kids are gonna have, all that kinda stuff, that goes 00:31:14.530 --> 00:31:15.740 hand-in-hand with it. 00:31:15.740 --> 00:31:21.830 So, for me, I needed a list of people that I could find, and my solution for that was 00:31:21.830 --> 00:31:30.149 looking at the sex offender registry and finding Level 3 sex offenders, the worst sex offenders, 00:31:30.149 --> 00:31:33.870 and putting their name as the return address. 00:31:33.870 --> 00:31:39.100 What this did was it made it so it was a legitimate address, a legitimate return address where 00:31:39.100 --> 00:31:45.210 I could be pretty sure – not guaranteed but reasonably sure – that kids didn’t 00:31:45.210 --> 00:31:53.080 live at and that if this guy got raided, I didn’t really care ‘cause I have no sympathy 00:31:53.080 --> 00:31:54.080 for chomos. 00:31:54.080 --> 00:32:00.120 That’s what they call them in federal prison, is child molesters or pedos, as they call 00:32:00.120 --> 00:32:02.580 them on the darknet and everywhere else. 00:32:02.580 --> 00:32:08.960 So, I was like, at the end of the day it was a great list to have ‘cause no matter where 00:32:08.960 --> 00:32:13.690 I’m shipping from in the country, there are sex offenders, and I didn’t feel guilty 00:32:13.690 --> 00:32:21.740 about using them for my nefarious purposes because at one point they had used someone 00:32:21.740 --> 00:32:24.690 else for their nefarious purposes, you know? 00:32:24.690 --> 00:32:28.380 [MUSIC] I just saw it as karma. 00:32:28.380 --> 00:32:33.001 JACK: Now, this is when he’d hand over the packages to his cousin, and he told her to 00:32:33.001 --> 00:32:34.001 ship these out. 00:32:34.001 --> 00:32:37.090 But there were certain rules that he told her to follow. 00:32:37.090 --> 00:32:44.950 SAM: Each post office, at a maximum, would have three packages going out, right? 00:32:44.950 --> 00:32:53.059 So, if we were shipping nine packages that day, she would probably be visiting three 00:32:53.059 --> 00:32:56.710 or more post offices. 00:32:56.710 --> 00:33:01.240 So, our maximum was three packages per post office. 00:33:01.240 --> 00:33:07.330 So, she would go, she would ship out these packages from these three different post offices, 00:33:07.330 --> 00:33:11.820 she would get receipts, and she would bring them back, and I would cross off the name 00:33:11.820 --> 00:33:14.710 of that town. 00:33:14.710 --> 00:33:17.899 Then the next day I would pick a different county, right? 00:33:17.899 --> 00:33:20.040 That’s how I rotated. 00:33:20.040 --> 00:33:27.190 But it’s also how I ensured that I did not visit that same post office for at least six 00:33:27.190 --> 00:33:32.539 months, ‘cause I figured if the feds are gonna – the feds – now, say we ship out 00:33:32.539 --> 00:33:35.010 this package from this post office. 00:33:35.010 --> 00:33:38.690 The feds catch it and they’re like, well, we didn’t get any video footage so we’re 00:33:38.690 --> 00:33:40.080 gonna set up shop; we’re gonna do surveillance. 00:33:40.080 --> 00:33:41.309 That’s what they do, right? 00:33:41.309 --> 00:33:45.390 We’re gonna set up surveillance at this location. 00:33:45.390 --> 00:33:48.440 Have fun, ‘cause we’re not gonna be back for six months. 00:33:48.440 --> 00:33:50.510 How big is your budget? 00:33:50.510 --> 00:33:55.039 We’re not sending out five-gallon buckets of fentanyl. 00:33:55.039 --> 00:34:03.630 In fact, the most dangerous – the most harmful drug that I shipped, I think, was alcohol. 00:34:03.630 --> 00:34:07.500 Other people would say it was powdered cocaine. 00:34:07.500 --> 00:34:11.010 I think – I – honestly, I think alcohol is worse even though it’s legal. 00:34:11.010 --> 00:34:17.929 But I didn’t sell heroin, I didn’t sell – I didn’t sell meth, I didn’t sell 00:34:17.929 --> 00:34:19.970 fentanyl. 00:34:19.970 --> 00:34:23.750 I tried not to sell drugs that I thought took people’s souls. 00:34:23.750 --> 00:34:28.050 I tried to sell what I considered to be party drugs. 00:34:28.050 --> 00:34:35.159 Again, people would be like, that’s – you’re just trying to rationalize your bad behavior, 00:34:35.159 --> 00:34:36.570 and you could absolutely say that. 00:34:36.570 --> 00:34:38.000 I wouldn’t contest it. 00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:39.720 I wouldn’t say it’s wrong. 00:34:39.720 --> 00:34:47.649 That’s what it is, but at the end of the day, for me, that was my moral line, you know? 00:34:47.649 --> 00:34:52.310 I was proud of myself for even having one, ‘cause there’s a lot of guys that don’t. 00:34:52.310 --> 00:34:58.750 JACK: Huh, it’s always fascinating to me to see what moral lines people draw in the 00:34:58.750 --> 00:35:00.410 sand and don’t cross. 00:35:00.410 --> 00:35:05.970 You’d think being a criminal just means fuck the rules, be all punk about it, but 00:35:05.970 --> 00:35:11.710 you just heard Sam talk about a lot of the rules that he follows to stay safe and secure. 00:35:11.710 --> 00:35:17.200 But adding rules just for moral reasons is interesting to me. 00:35:17.200 --> 00:35:21.570 One was that Sam would only use registered Level 3 sex offenders as his return addresses 00:35:21.570 --> 00:35:26.420 because he thought it would be wrong to put a good citizen down as a return address. 00:35:26.420 --> 00:35:30.520 Another was that while Sam sold a lot of different drugs, there were some that he wouldn’t 00:35:30.520 --> 00:35:33.640 sell, the ones that took your soul away from you. 00:35:33.640 --> 00:35:37.730 He also didn’t want to sell to kids, but he had no way of checking that. 00:35:37.730 --> 00:35:39.720 SAM: Well, so, that’s the thing, right? 00:35:39.720 --> 00:35:40.720 Everyone’s anonymous. 00:35:40.720 --> 00:35:45.580 It’s kinda like if I sell a knife on Amazon, how do I know you’re over eighteen? 00:35:45.580 --> 00:35:50.380 JACK: [MUSIC] That’s the thing; doing this as your job, you really do need a moral code 00:35:50.380 --> 00:35:56.990 because the stuff you see on these sites gets dark fast, and some things that are for sale 00:35:56.990 --> 00:36:01.140 really make you question where you stand on a lot of stuff. 00:36:01.140 --> 00:36:06.470 Like, should there even be a market where you can buy and sell anything? 00:36:06.470 --> 00:36:13.400 Stolen items, counterfeits, forbidden items, poisons, weapons, and of course, drugs? 00:36:13.400 --> 00:36:15.690 Sam was only involved with the drugs part. 00:36:15.690 --> 00:36:19.890 SAM: All of us have an inherent right to our own bodies, you know? 00:36:19.890 --> 00:36:28.280 If you want to go eat McDonalds for the rest of your life and become 400 pounds and die 00:36:28.280 --> 00:36:31.829 of a heart attack, you’re free to do so as an American, you know? 00:36:31.829 --> 00:36:38.329 I’m of the belief that if you want to do drugs, you should be free to do so. 00:36:38.329 --> 00:36:42.640 As an American, you have a right to put whatever you want in your body, no – unless someone 00:36:42.640 --> 00:36:46.040 else owns your body, no one has the right to tell you what to do with it. 00:36:46.040 --> 00:36:50.839 It’s like me telling you you can’t wear your glasses over your eyes; you have to wear 00:36:50.839 --> 00:36:51.839 them on your forehead. 00:36:51.839 --> 00:36:52.839 Who am I? 00:36:52.839 --> 00:36:53.839 I have no right to your property. 00:36:53.839 --> 00:36:55.700 Who am I to tell you what to do? 00:36:55.700 --> 00:36:58.690 So, that was kind of my contention on that whole thing. 00:36:58.690 --> 00:37:02.960 JACK: This is a libertarian way of looking at the world. 00:37:02.960 --> 00:37:07.619 Libertarians want to maximize autonomy and minimize the government’s involvement in 00:37:07.619 --> 00:37:08.619 your life. 00:37:08.619 --> 00:37:14.160 Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the first big darknet marketplace, Silk Road, was a libertarian, 00:37:14.160 --> 00:37:15.160 too. 00:37:15.160 --> 00:37:18.430 He had to be in order to run a marketplace like Silk Road. 00:37:18.430 --> 00:37:22.760 He thought people should be allowed to make their own choices of what drugs they can buy, 00:37:22.760 --> 00:37:24.839 even if they’re illegal drugs. 00:37:24.839 --> 00:37:30.030 But then weapons started showing up on Silk Road, and it really made Ross take a long, 00:37:30.030 --> 00:37:34.570 hard look into his soul to figure out what rules should be around weapons. 00:37:34.570 --> 00:37:40.880 He ultimately decided that it’s gonna be prohibited to sell anything whose purpose 00:37:40.880 --> 00:37:43.060 was to harm or defraud. 00:37:43.060 --> 00:37:48.580 So, Silk Road didn’t allow weapons or child sexual abuse material or even stolen credit 00:37:48.580 --> 00:37:49.660 cards on the site. 00:37:49.660 --> 00:37:55.870 Again, I find it very fascinating what criminals won’t touch due to ethical reasons. 00:37:55.870 --> 00:37:59.670 I could never run or operate or even admin a darknet marketplace. 00:37:59.670 --> 00:38:03.359 I’d get stressed out, turn old, and die in like, one week. 00:38:03.359 --> 00:38:07.200 Just this week in my town there was a warning poster I saw stuck in a bathroom of a coffee 00:38:07.200 --> 00:38:12.330 shop downtown and it said, ‘Look out, there’s a bad batch going around. 00:38:12.330 --> 00:38:14.530 Make sure to carry Narcan and test your drugs.’ 00:38:14.530 --> 00:38:17.270 It’s talking about fentanyl. 00:38:17.270 --> 00:38:21.660 Just this week I saw in my town there were two fentanyl-related deaths; one guy found 00:38:21.660 --> 00:38:25.329 dead in a bathroom and the other overdosed in a jail cell. 00:38:25.329 --> 00:38:31.440 See, fentanyl is an opioid, a painkiller, but it’s fifty times more potent than morphine, 00:38:31.440 --> 00:38:33.830 and it’s just incredibly powerful. 00:38:33.830 --> 00:38:39.240 But because it’s so potent, people can easily take too much and die, which is a problem 00:38:39.240 --> 00:38:45.849 on its own, but what’s scary to me is people don’t always know they’re taking it. 00:38:45.849 --> 00:38:49.580 One darknet market vendor was simply selling Xanax and oxycodone. 00:38:49.580 --> 00:38:53.670 Now, people buying this stuff think that’s what they’re getting. 00:38:53.670 --> 00:38:58.630 But no, this seller was lacing the Xanax and oxycodone with fentanyl. 00:38:58.630 --> 00:39:04.839 So, if some dad who just had tennis elbow or something needed some heavy-duty painkillers, 00:39:04.839 --> 00:39:08.830 he could wait a month for a doctor visit and then get a prescription and then go to the 00:39:08.830 --> 00:39:14.150 pharmacy and get it, or he could just order it on a darknet marketplace and have it in 00:39:14.150 --> 00:39:15.170 four days. 00:39:15.170 --> 00:39:21.290 But that’s dangerous because he could get one laced with fentanyl and run a huge risk 00:39:21.290 --> 00:39:23.369 of overdosing on it. 00:39:23.369 --> 00:39:27.810 We hear stories of people dying from fentanyl all the time, and this is why it’s important 00:39:27.810 --> 00:39:29.400 to test the drugs you get. 00:39:29.400 --> 00:39:33.640 There are fentanyl strips that you can get where you can test to see if the drug you 00:39:33.640 --> 00:39:36.190 bought has fentanyl in it. 00:39:36.190 --> 00:39:41.530 This is why I could never be a darknet market admin; if I knew there were people lacing 00:39:41.530 --> 00:39:46.829 deadly things into drugs that shouldn’t be there and killing people, I’d feel obligated 00:39:46.829 --> 00:39:50.060 to figure out who the hell that person was that sold it. 00:39:50.060 --> 00:39:54.660 That guy who was selling that laced oxycodone got arrested and was put in prison for twenty 00:39:54.660 --> 00:39:55.660 years. 00:39:55.660 --> 00:39:57.839 He is very likely responsible for a few deaths. 00:39:57.839 --> 00:40:02.930 So, some vendors on these darknet marketplaces really don’t give a fuck. 00:40:02.930 --> 00:40:06.960 Despite all the illegal stuff that Sam was doing, it’s good to see that he wasn’t 00:40:06.960 --> 00:40:11.760 misleading his customers or lacing them with deadly ingredients, and he had rules that 00:40:11.760 --> 00:40:12.760 he was following. 00:40:12.760 --> 00:40:19.319 SAM: For me, it was like, no international shipments, no selling stuff that – you know, 00:40:19.319 --> 00:40:29.420 heroin, meth, fentanyl, things that kill people, and not ripping people off, giving them the 00:40:29.420 --> 00:40:34.359 best-quality product that I could source on a global scale. 00:40:34.359 --> 00:40:37.770 JACK: Okay, so one thing that you should be clear about from the beginning if you’re 00:40:37.770 --> 00:40:42.490 going to be a darknet market vendor is you need a goal, because things can get crazy 00:40:42.490 --> 00:40:46.619 deep down in the darknet and if you’re not clear of what you’re doing down there, you 00:40:46.619 --> 00:40:48.450 could get swept up in the undertow. 00:40:48.450 --> 00:40:57.150 SAM: My only goal with this was to make like, two hundred grand, ‘cause in Vermont you 00:40:57.150 --> 00:40:59.410 could buy a house for relatively cheap. 00:40:59.410 --> 00:41:05.109 You can find a cheap house for like, a hundred grand. 00:41:05.109 --> 00:41:09.890 So it was like, I buy a $100,000-house and I have $100,000 left which will let me pay 00:41:09.890 --> 00:41:18.180 the taxes and live off of it for long enough until I can find something to keep me afloat 00:41:18.180 --> 00:41:19.530 permanently. 00:41:19.530 --> 00:41:31.920 But it was like, between my cousin’s fee that I paid her and having to upgrade my cannabis 00:41:31.920 --> 00:41:43.640 setup and upgrade my alcohol and pay for shipping and kind of evolve with the business, I always 00:41:43.640 --> 00:41:46.369 found myself always reinvesting. 00:41:46.369 --> 00:41:51.430 So, if I sold something, I made eight hundred bucks off of it, I would be like, alright, 00:41:51.430 --> 00:41:59.240 four hundred bucks is gonna be for shipping fees and the other four hundred of that is 00:41:59.240 --> 00:42:06.800 gonna be for gas money for my cousin to ship $400 worth of stuff, hopefully. 00:42:06.800 --> 00:42:13.810 So, I made enough to make a profit, but between my cousin and my ex, who I was still living 00:42:13.810 --> 00:42:17.109 with, I never got to that $200,000 line. 00:42:17.109 --> 00:42:23.880 Now, I did get to a point where, towards the end, your money starts to come in exponentially. 00:42:23.880 --> 00:42:27.740 So, basically the first week was like, $300. 00:42:27.740 --> 00:42:31.849 Second week was probably $500, and then I had weeks where it was nothing. 00:42:31.849 --> 00:42:36.559 Then you have weeks where you got Bitcoin and guess what? 00:42:36.559 --> 00:42:39.940 Bitcoin dropped 20% in value. 00:42:39.940 --> 00:42:47.180 So, now you gotta hold that ‘til it goes back up at least to that – at least 20%. 00:42:47.180 --> 00:42:56.040 I’m not a millionaire; I don’t have a lot of money, so having that being held, it 00:42:56.040 --> 00:42:57.040 kills you. 00:42:57.040 --> 00:43:00.300 JACK: I learned about Sam because he gave a talk at Defcon last year. 00:43:00.300 --> 00:43:05.170 In his talk, he had a clear warning for others; don’t drink and type. 00:43:05.170 --> 00:43:10.190 SAM: [LAUGHING] Yes, absolutely, yeah. 00:43:10.190 --> 00:43:14.120 It’s more dangerous than drinking and driving, absolutely, yeah. 00:43:14.120 --> 00:43:16.490 JACK: What’s the danger here? 00:43:16.490 --> 00:43:18.720 SAM: What happens is that complacency. 00:43:18.720 --> 00:43:22.369 So, you get comfortable at a certain point with me. 00:43:22.369 --> 00:43:26.609 Just like me and you might know each other in year – in a few years in IRC, right? 00:43:26.609 --> 00:43:34.460 Then you get wasted one night and, you know, I call you by your handle and you say oh, 00:43:34.460 --> 00:43:39.060 no, man, it’s cool; just call me Jack. 00:43:39.060 --> 00:43:40.060 Right? 00:43:40.060 --> 00:43:48.650 It’s like in that situation but on the darknet, right, where I very well could be a fed. 00:43:48.650 --> 00:43:49.650 Now I know something. 00:43:49.650 --> 00:43:54.950 I know an identifying piece of information about you and maybe I’ve seen you say something 00:43:54.950 --> 00:43:57.579 a certain way that’s unique to a certain area. 00:43:57.579 --> 00:44:02.770 Now I know what your first name is and around about where you are. 00:44:02.770 --> 00:44:08.260 As time goes on, there will be more information leaks that I can capitalize on to figure it 00:44:08.260 --> 00:44:11.150 out, and that’s why I said – to answer your question, that’s why I said don’t 00:44:11.150 --> 00:44:18.500 drink and type, because whatever complacency you have is exponentially increased, which 00:44:18.500 --> 00:44:24.380 means the chances of you basically being a data leak on yourself increases exponentially 00:44:24.380 --> 00:44:25.859 with that. 00:44:25.859 --> 00:44:28.190 JACK: What kind of payment were you accepting? 00:44:28.190 --> 00:44:30.400 SAM: So, yeah, Bitcoin. 00:44:30.400 --> 00:44:31.500 Bitcoin only. 00:44:31.500 --> 00:44:33.700 Yeah, that was it. 00:44:33.700 --> 00:44:36.569 JACK: Okay, so washing money is what I want to know. 00:44:36.569 --> 00:44:38.480 What did you do to cash out? 00:44:38.480 --> 00:44:39.690 SAM: Super easy. 00:44:39.690 --> 00:44:42.290 Yeah, that’s probably one of the easiest things to do. 00:44:42.290 --> 00:44:46.860 [MUSIC] I think the simplest way to cash out is with drugs. 00:44:46.860 --> 00:44:50.339 People be like, what the hell? 00:44:50.339 --> 00:44:53.910 So, it’s super easy. 00:44:53.910 --> 00:44:55.790 Here’s the thing, right? 00:44:55.790 --> 00:45:01.369 Around where I live, a really – a grade – good, good, good ounce of weed might run 00:45:01.369 --> 00:45:04.890 you like, $225, $250. 00:45:04.890 --> 00:45:12.530 So, on the darknet, I can go and buy thirty bucks an ounce. 00:45:12.530 --> 00:45:18.890 Like, my cash-out would be like, buy a bunch of this weed and anyone that I knew in my 00:45:18.890 --> 00:45:26.480 area that I knew was a social butterfly and I knew we’d keep their mouth shut, I would 00:45:26.480 --> 00:45:35.030 turn around and I would say hey, man, listen; I will sell you a pound of this weed for sixteen 00:45:35.030 --> 00:45:37.530 hundred bucks and I’ll give it to you upfront. 00:45:37.530 --> 00:45:39.809 Now, that’s a hundred bucks an ounce. 00:45:39.809 --> 00:45:45.240 Again, the typical price in that area was $225, $250. 00:45:45.240 --> 00:45:50.630 This guy can turn around – sell ounces for $150, undercut everyone by almost a hundred 00:45:50.630 --> 00:45:56.280 bucks and make a good amount of money, and he didn’t even have to put up any money. 00:45:56.280 --> 00:46:02.930 He would be able to do that and come back with that in like, a week to two weeks. 00:46:02.930 --> 00:46:06.410 So, I’m getting cash from all different sources. 00:46:06.410 --> 00:46:10.730 JACK: His theory was that if this person got caught, they wouldn’t snitch on him because 00:46:10.730 --> 00:46:12.730 he was giving them good deals. 00:46:12.730 --> 00:46:18.470 Besides using this method to turn his cryptocurrency into cash, he also would exchange his Bitcoin 00:46:18.470 --> 00:46:23.060 for Monero, which is more private than Bitcoin and harder to track, and then he’d cash 00:46:23.060 --> 00:46:24.320 out his Monero. 00:46:24.320 --> 00:46:29.760 Okay, so at this point he’s posted a lot to forums and is a buyer and is a seller on 00:46:29.760 --> 00:46:34.450 some markets, and he’s becoming well-known and even starts working for one of the darknet 00:46:34.450 --> 00:46:35.450 markets. 00:46:35.450 --> 00:46:36.780 [MUSIC] Specifically he was doing… 00:46:36.780 --> 00:46:38.170 SAM: Dispute resolution. 00:46:38.170 --> 00:46:43.800 So, basically when you would have a customer who would dispute a sale and you would have 00:46:43.800 --> 00:46:49.321 a vendor who would either agree or dispute it, then I would manage some of the – sometimes 00:46:49.321 --> 00:46:55.240 on some of those markets I would manage those disputes and I would be the one to decide, 00:46:55.240 --> 00:47:00.700 like, do you get a refund, do you not get a refund, do you get a percentage of a refund? 00:47:00.700 --> 00:47:03.260 Like, how is that figured out? 00:47:03.260 --> 00:47:09.080 We would do that by looking at obviously the reputation of both the buyer and the seller, 00:47:09.080 --> 00:47:14.970 but we would also look at the account age, we would look and see if they had accounts 00:47:14.970 --> 00:47:17.800 on other darknet markets, how reputable they were. 00:47:17.800 --> 00:47:21.800 JACK: On top of doing that, because he was so involved with the community, one darknet 00:47:21.800 --> 00:47:26.339 marketplace asked if he wanted to do PR for them, and he took that job. 00:47:26.339 --> 00:47:29.890 It was a small job; it didn’t pay much, but since he was already very active in the 00:47:29.890 --> 00:47:34.809 forums and stuff, he could just keep an eye on any negative posts about his marketplace 00:47:34.809 --> 00:47:36.651 and he would try to make that seem more positive. 00:47:36.651 --> 00:47:42.250 Now at this point, one of the more popular forums to talk about darknet markets was actually 00:47:42.250 --> 00:47:43.260 Reddit. 00:47:43.260 --> 00:47:49.080 The subreddit r/darknetmarkets had 180,000 members. 00:47:49.080 --> 00:47:53.020 This is where Sam would hang out and see what chatter was going on about darknet markets. 00:47:53.020 --> 00:47:57.849 One day, someone made a post about the market Sam was doing PR for. 00:47:57.849 --> 00:48:03.500 The person posting it was going by the name Hugbunter, a play on the words ‘bug hunter’. 00:48:03.500 --> 00:48:07.830 Hugbunter found an exposed config file on the darknet market site. 00:48:07.830 --> 00:48:09.069 SAM: He put it on Reddit. 00:48:09.069 --> 00:48:11.920 He didn’t put the actual page; like, he didn’t leak anything. 00:48:11.920 --> 00:48:16.520 He was responsible in his disclosure and he contacted the admins. 00:48:16.520 --> 00:48:20.450 He was like, hey, you guys have a IP leak. 00:48:20.450 --> 00:48:27.839 They just kinda gaslit him and they’re like, oh yeah, we’ll discuss it. 00:48:27.839 --> 00:48:32.450 Two weeks later he’s like, oh, this is a security issue. 00:48:32.450 --> 00:48:34.799 They’re like, yeah, alright, whatever. 00:48:34.799 --> 00:48:35.799 You know? 00:48:35.799 --> 00:48:42.390 He was posting about it on Reddit, so I’m trying to chill him out from posting about 00:48:42.390 --> 00:48:48.160 it on Reddit because I’m in charge of PR. 00:48:48.160 --> 00:48:57.880 I had went on as a representative and said, you know, yeah, that is our honeypot. 00:48:57.880 --> 00:49:01.100 [LAUGHING] You know? 00:49:01.100 --> 00:49:06.619 We’re glad that you were able to showcase that, ‘cause now we can show people how 00:49:06.619 --> 00:49:11.960 strong our security is that we also have offensive measures built in. 00:49:11.960 --> 00:49:16.460 He was like, oh, that’s not true, that’s not true. 00:49:16.460 --> 00:49:21.780 I’m like – we went back and forth and we argued for a long time. 00:49:21.780 --> 00:49:27.069 JACK: So, that’s how Sam got to know Hugbunter, by trying to gaslight him over chat messages. 00:49:27.069 --> 00:49:32.710 Well, over time, Sam got to know Hugbunter more, and yeah, the conversation continued 00:49:32.710 --> 00:49:34.119 into other things. 00:49:34.119 --> 00:49:36.329 One thing they talked a bunch about was Reddit. 00:49:36.329 --> 00:49:41.020 Yeah, just Reddit itself, because some users were getting banned from Reddit trying to 00:49:41.020 --> 00:49:45.300 sell things right on Reddit instead of a darknet marketplace, and it became a big thing to 00:49:45.300 --> 00:49:46.300 talk about. 00:49:46.300 --> 00:49:49.640 Like, how much is Reddit going to allow on their site? 00:49:49.640 --> 00:49:52.670 We’re talking about illegal buying and selling of stuff here. 00:49:52.670 --> 00:49:57.840 SAM: He had come up with the idea; like, oh, let’s mirror it and have this forum on the 00:49:57.840 --> 00:50:00.740 darknet so worst-case scenario, there’s a fallback. 00:50:00.740 --> 00:50:05.240 JACK: [MUSIC] So, the idea was born; take the darknet market’s subreddit and make 00:50:05.240 --> 00:50:09.260 it sort of a dedicated Reddit-like site on the darknet. 00:50:09.260 --> 00:50:11.619 Hugbunter got to work building it. 00:50:11.619 --> 00:50:13.490 SAM: He coded the site. 00:50:13.490 --> 00:50:22.040 He did all of that, and his job was to be a background admin. 00:50:22.040 --> 00:50:32.310 My job coming on was to be an admin and actually do stuff on the actual forum, because I had 00:50:32.310 --> 00:50:37.160 a laundry list of credentials of sites that I had worked at before. 00:50:37.160 --> 00:50:39.730 JACK: The site that Hugbunter created was called Dread. 00:50:39.730 --> 00:50:45.780 They didn’t allow users to buy or sell anything, but just, let’s talk about darknet markets. 00:50:45.780 --> 00:50:49.270 They advertised this new site on Reddit to let people know that hey, there’s a fallback 00:50:49.270 --> 00:50:51.079 place to go if Reddit goes down. 00:50:51.079 --> 00:50:53.960 Sure enough, that prediction came true. 00:50:53.960 --> 00:50:58.030 In 2018, Reddit posted some new rules to their site saying that they’re not gonna allow 00:50:58.030 --> 00:51:00.160 users to exchange certain items. 00:51:00.160 --> 00:51:06.230 The items forbidden to be exchanged on Reddit were firearms, drugs, sex, stolen goods, personal 00:51:06.230 --> 00:51:09.549 information, fake IDs, and counterfeit money. 00:51:09.549 --> 00:51:13.160 Apparently Reddit had noticed a lot of people were buying and selling these things on their 00:51:13.160 --> 00:51:17.200 site and took a big move to ban communities who were involved in this. 00:51:17.200 --> 00:51:22.819 This resulted in Reddit shutting down the whole r/darknetmarkets forum. 00:51:22.819 --> 00:51:27.280 This suddenly made the Dread forum explode with new users and went on to be one of the 00:51:27.280 --> 00:51:32.810 biggest forums on the darknet, and Sam had a front-row seat to it all as the first admin 00:51:32.810 --> 00:51:34.450 to Dread. 00:51:34.450 --> 00:51:37.589 SAM: No one ever comes to my house. 00:51:37.589 --> 00:51:41.130 No one comes to my house. 00:51:41.130 --> 00:51:46.809 So, the only people that ever came to my house or people who knocked on the door – and 00:51:46.809 --> 00:51:48.000 they try to sell paintings. 00:51:48.000 --> 00:51:51.540 ‘Cause again, where I’m living, it’s an affluent area, right? 00:51:51.540 --> 00:51:55.559 So, people would knock on the door, try to sell paintings, or they’d knock on the – like, 00:51:55.559 --> 00:51:57.740 Jehovah’s Witnesses would come and knock on the door. 00:51:57.740 --> 00:51:58.740 JACK: Mm-hm. 00:51:58.740 --> 00:52:01.120 SAM: [MUSIC] So, I get a knock on the door. 00:52:01.120 --> 00:52:03.490 So, it’s like, 7:15 in the morning. 00:52:03.490 --> 00:52:09.850 So, I just got my coffee, so I’m sipping my coffee. 00:52:09.850 --> 00:52:16.849 I walk to the door and I open the door, and there’s this dude standing there and he’s 00:52:16.849 --> 00:52:24.030 got a bulletproof vest, he’s got a badge that’s sewn into the bulletproof vest that 00:52:24.030 --> 00:52:26.619 – I’ve never seen this badge before. 00:52:26.619 --> 00:52:28.920 He’s holding up a piece of paper. 00:52:28.920 --> 00:52:32.109 He’s like, hi, my name’s so-and-so. 00:52:32.109 --> 00:52:37.150 I’m a Special Agent with the Department of Homeland Security, and this is a federal 00:52:37.150 --> 00:52:38.150 search warrant. 00:52:38.150 --> 00:52:41.869 I’m like – I’m sitting there and I’m holding my coffee and I’m looking back at 00:52:41.869 --> 00:52:47.330 this guy, and I’m looking at the thirty people that are behind this guy that have 00:52:47.330 --> 00:52:52.380 MP-5s and ski masks with skulls on them on. 00:52:52.380 --> 00:52:57.040 I’m like – this is before Covid, so seeing someone with a mask is weird. 00:52:57.040 --> 00:52:59.040 You know what I mean? 00:52:59.040 --> 00:53:03.040 So, I see all these people behind this guy and they’re all looking through the windows 00:53:03.040 --> 00:53:05.640 and all this other nonsense. 00:53:05.640 --> 00:53:07.390 I was like, oh, okay. 00:53:07.390 --> 00:53:09.300 I guess you want to come in then, huh? 00:53:09.300 --> 00:53:10.650 He was like, yeah. 00:53:10.650 --> 00:53:12.000 I was like, alright. 00:53:12.000 --> 00:53:20.500 So, as he starts walking in, I’m like, listen; there’s two adult females – one’s my 00:53:20.500 --> 00:53:25.270 cousin and one’s my ex – and then there are three children in the house. 00:53:25.270 --> 00:53:30.670 ‘Cause I don’t want them – they like to play like they’re in Iraq, you know? 00:53:30.670 --> 00:53:39.961 I don’t want them running through, pointing an MP-5 at my sons or my daughter, and scaring 00:53:39.961 --> 00:53:40.961 the shit out of them. 00:53:40.961 --> 00:53:46.020 I want them to know who’s in there so they’re not scared, ‘cause if they’re not scared, 00:53:46.020 --> 00:53:48.431 they might be a little bit more relaxed when going – and they were. 00:53:48.431 --> 00:53:55.260 They were – they were pretty courteous and calm, and that was my first interaction with 00:53:55.260 --> 00:53:56.260 them. 00:53:56.260 --> 00:54:02.730 JACK: Just as a step back here, kids in the house with the whole drug lab… 00:54:02.730 --> 00:54:12.430 SAM: Yeah, there’s no lab, and it was – the room that I had the cannabis in was separate 00:54:12.430 --> 00:54:13.570 from the main house. 00:54:13.570 --> 00:54:16.030 So, that wasn’t something that they were around. 00:54:16.030 --> 00:54:18.280 JACK: And the packaging and all that, they never went around that? 00:54:18.280 --> 00:54:20.549 SAM: Right, and that was in a clean room. 00:54:20.549 --> 00:54:22.390 Right, yeah, so they don’t see any of that. 00:54:22.390 --> 00:54:26.550 All the narcotics that I have were kept in a safe in there. 00:54:26.550 --> 00:54:28.569 JACK: Okay. 00:54:28.569 --> 00:54:31.470 Alright, so they come through, they see all this stuff? 00:54:31.470 --> 00:54:32.470 SAM: Yeah. 00:54:32.470 --> 00:54:39.610 So, what they do is they raid; they go through, they find the – so, alright, so moving back 00:54:39.610 --> 00:54:40.610 a little bit. 00:54:40.610 --> 00:54:45.359 One thing my – that my cousin had been worried about was – she was like, alright, let’s 00:54:45.359 --> 00:54:46.980 say we do this and we get caught. 00:54:46.980 --> 00:54:50.990 I was like, listen, if we get caught, it’s because I screwed up. 00:54:50.990 --> 00:54:53.150 I’m in charge of everything, you know? 00:54:53.150 --> 00:54:57.760 I’m in charge of the security, I’m in charge of everything that goes on. 00:54:57.760 --> 00:55:02.069 So, if something doesn’t go right, then it’s my fault. 00:55:02.069 --> 00:55:06.960 So, I was like, listen, if they come and they raid us, I’ll tell them it was all me. 00:55:06.960 --> 00:55:10.599 ‘Cause at the end of the day, why am I not? 00:55:10.599 --> 00:55:13.050 If I don’t, then they’re gonna put it on everyone. 00:55:13.050 --> 00:55:17.050 So, when they came in, they searched and they’re going through. 00:55:17.050 --> 00:55:19.271 They come and they see me; they’re like, oh, any drugs in the house? 00:55:19.271 --> 00:55:21.349 I was like, yeah, they’re upstairs. 00:55:21.349 --> 00:55:23.099 They’re in my safe. 00:55:23.099 --> 00:55:24.369 They’re all mine. 00:55:24.369 --> 00:55:25.980 I’m a darknet vendor. 00:55:25.980 --> 00:55:29.020 They were like, what? 00:55:29.020 --> 00:55:31.600 [LAUGHING] They were blown away. 00:55:31.600 --> 00:55:38.680 But again, I had an agreement with my cousin prior to this that if this happened, this 00:55:38.680 --> 00:55:41.290 worst-case scenario – we had a ton of contingency plans. 00:55:41.290 --> 00:55:46.270 That’s a part of having good operational security and having good information security 00:55:46.270 --> 00:55:47.270 policies. 00:55:47.270 --> 00:55:52.260 It’s like, do you have an incident response policy at your work? 00:55:52.260 --> 00:55:55.030 So did we, you know? 00:55:55.030 --> 00:55:57.789 This was agreed to prior to anything. 00:55:57.789 --> 00:56:02.380 So, that was the thing; if we get raided, I admit everything was mine, and I did. 00:56:02.380 --> 00:56:04.109 Said, listen, I’m a darknet vendor. 00:56:04.109 --> 00:56:05.109 Everything’s mine. 00:56:05.109 --> 00:56:06.470 They’re like, what’s the combination of the safe? 00:56:06.470 --> 00:56:07.650 Gave them the combo. 00:56:07.650 --> 00:56:09.630 What am I gonna do, say no? 00:56:09.630 --> 00:56:10.630 They’re gonna open it anyways. 00:56:10.630 --> 00:56:14.980 JACK: The police were apparently unprepared to make any sort of arrests at that point, 00:56:14.980 --> 00:56:19.880 so they left, created an indictment, and then they set a date for his arraignment. 00:56:19.880 --> 00:56:22.760 SAM: So, I go for my arraignment, right? 00:56:22.760 --> 00:56:27.220 So, now I move out of the house I was in to an – a different apartment. 00:56:27.220 --> 00:56:31.790 So, this – the Department of Homeland Security showed up on the day of my arraignment to 00:56:31.790 --> 00:56:35.119 that old house, ‘cause they didn’t know I moved. 00:56:35.119 --> 00:56:39.619 They wanted to arrest me there and bring me into court in handcuffs. 00:56:39.619 --> 00:56:43.780 But I didn’t live there anymore and the geniuses didn’t know I didn’t live there 00:56:43.780 --> 00:56:46.130 anymore. 00:56:46.130 --> 00:56:52.619 The rockstars they are, they had no clue where I was. 00:56:52.619 --> 00:56:56.720 So, my ex had told them, oh, he moved and this is the address. 00:56:56.720 --> 00:57:02.210 By the time they got to this address, I was already halfway to the federal courthouse 00:57:02.210 --> 00:57:05.530 to go turn myself in to the US Marshals for my arraignment. 00:57:05.530 --> 00:57:11.249 They said, listen, in the time that you were a vendor – I think it was – in total it 00:57:11.249 --> 00:57:12.990 was like, a year and a half or two years. 00:57:12.990 --> 00:57:18.819 They were like, in the short time that you were a vendor, you have crawled into more 00:57:18.819 --> 00:57:26.089 crevices and learned more about this culture and seeped into this culture than we’ve 00:57:26.089 --> 00:57:29.320 been able to do in six years. 00:57:29.320 --> 00:57:35.140 Because in my short period of time, I inserted myself into the community and ended up working 00:57:35.140 --> 00:57:39.660 with these markets and starting up Dread. 00:57:39.660 --> 00:57:46.940 I had become – I had made myself an indispensable part of the community by contributing, you 00:57:46.940 --> 00:57:54.920 know, and contributing in meaningful ways, and that’s what made me valuable to the 00:57:54.920 --> 00:57:58.849 community at the end of the day. 00:57:58.849 --> 00:58:05.240 They said, hey, listen, someone with your knowledge, we could absolutely use that and 00:58:05.240 --> 00:58:13.410 going forward, we’d like to bring you a laptop and you can continue taking orders 00:58:13.410 --> 00:58:14.410 and vending. 00:58:14.410 --> 00:58:17.940 You’re not actually gonna be sending drugs, but just gathering information. 00:58:17.940 --> 00:58:21.500 I was like man, I’m – what? 00:58:21.500 --> 00:58:22.680 I’m good. 00:58:22.680 --> 00:58:25.630 Remember, I had been to county before, right? 00:58:25.630 --> 00:58:27.599 I had been to state prison. 00:58:27.599 --> 00:58:29.630 But nah, I’m set, man. 00:58:29.630 --> 00:58:31.550 I’m like, yo, are you kidding me? 00:58:31.550 --> 00:58:32.820 I worked with cartels, dude. 00:58:32.820 --> 00:58:33.829 You know what I mean? 00:58:33.829 --> 00:58:35.329 I worked with multiple cartels. 00:58:35.329 --> 00:58:40.349 You think I’m gonna tell on people? 00:58:40.349 --> 00:58:41.890 I’m good. 00:58:41.890 --> 00:58:43.040 I have a family, man. 00:58:43.040 --> 00:58:44.160 You know what I mean? 00:58:44.160 --> 00:58:50.010 I did this for my family; now you think I’m gonna risk their lives to get out of whatever 00:58:50.010 --> 00:58:51.599 punishment’s coming? 00:58:51.599 --> 00:58:53.180 You’re delusional. 00:58:53.180 --> 00:58:54.750 I’d die for them. 00:58:54.750 --> 00:58:56.030 I’d kill for them. 00:58:56.030 --> 00:59:00.893 They’re my family, you know what I mean? 00:59:00.893 --> 00:59:02.020 So, they – obviously they didn’t like that. 00:59:02.020 --> 00:59:06.329 JACK: So, Sam and his cousin were able to go back home while the case was being built, 00:59:06.329 --> 00:59:09.510 and they set a date for when he was supposed to show up in court. 00:59:09.510 --> 00:59:12.910 At this point, Sam had moved out and was living in a small apartment. 00:59:12.910 --> 00:59:18.299 Now, at some point during his time as a darknet market vendor, his cousin introduced him to 00:59:18.299 --> 00:59:19.329 a lady. 00:59:19.329 --> 00:59:24.540 Sam and her chatted a lot online and over the phone, but never in person or even using 00:59:24.540 --> 00:59:25.710 video calls. 00:59:25.710 --> 00:59:29.460 They became really close and good friends, flirtatious at times, even. 00:59:29.460 --> 00:59:33.380 SAM: She didn’t know – obviously she didn’t know anything about what I was doing ‘cause 00:59:33.380 --> 00:59:38.050 it would be an – I considered it to be a massive opsec risk, right, to tell her. 00:59:38.050 --> 00:59:44.170 So, I just told her that I had a business and I wasn’t specific about it. 00:59:44.170 --> 00:59:49.390 We learned a lot about each other as I was doing my vending, and she was completely unaware 00:59:49.390 --> 00:59:50.390 of it. 00:59:50.390 --> 00:59:55.910 After I got raided, I lost all my electronics, so I lost her number; I lost all her info. 00:59:55.910 --> 01:00:03.619 So, I had to go find it all, and my cousin was able to do it through her Facebook. 01:00:03.619 --> 01:00:11.730 I remember contacting her and being like – she was like, oh, you haven’t talked to me in 01:00:11.730 --> 01:00:12.830 four days. 01:00:12.830 --> 01:00:13.830 Is there an issue? 01:00:13.830 --> 01:00:16.960 I was like, no, I got raided by the feds. 01:00:16.960 --> 01:00:17.960 You know? 01:00:17.960 --> 01:00:21.493 It’s like – you know those dudes that break up with a woman and tell her that, oh, 01:00:21.493 --> 01:00:22.493 I’m a spy. 01:00:22.493 --> 01:00:23.780 You know what I mean? 01:00:23.780 --> 01:00:28.950 I was like, I got raided by the Department of Homeland Security. 01:00:28.950 --> 01:00:34.069 They came in thirty deep on cooperation with the state police. 01:00:34.069 --> 01:00:36.160 The Cyber Crimes Task Force came in. 01:00:36.160 --> 01:00:40.039 She’s like, yeah, alright, whatever, Sam. 01:00:40.039 --> 01:00:42.750 Listen, if you don’t want to talk to me, you just tell me. 01:00:42.750 --> 01:00:51.359 [LAUGHING] I was like, I swear to god I got raided by the Department of Homeland Security. 01:00:51.359 --> 01:00:56.839 Obviously she ended up learning that it was true, that my phone did get taken, and then 01:00:56.839 --> 01:01:03.460 she ended up moving from where she was living up to – up here with me. 01:01:03.460 --> 01:01:06.549 ‘Cause I told her – I was like, listen, I have this indictment. 01:01:06.549 --> 01:01:08.099 I was like, just forget about me. 01:01:08.099 --> 01:01:09.869 I’m probably gonna do twenty years. 01:01:09.869 --> 01:01:11.600 ‘Cause we wanted to get married. 01:01:11.600 --> 01:01:16.119 We had learned – we had fell in love by talking to each other and we fell in love 01:01:16.119 --> 01:01:17.260 intellectually. 01:01:17.260 --> 01:01:20.890 I didn’t know what she looked like and I didn’t think she knew what I looked like. 01:01:20.890 --> 01:01:24.640 We had spent two years talking together and I had hated – I wouldn’t take a selfie 01:01:24.640 --> 01:01:27.000 ‘cause of my opsec, you know what I mean? 01:01:27.000 --> 01:01:32.770 [LAUGHING] So, after I got raided, I ended up talking to her; I sent her a selfie ‘cause 01:01:32.770 --> 01:01:35.089 now – who’s gonna raid me now, you know? 01:01:35.089 --> 01:01:39.780 She was like, oh, I know – I knew you looked like that ‘cause your cousin had showed 01:01:39.780 --> 01:01:41.440 me a picture of you a while ago. 01:01:41.440 --> 01:01:44.180 I was like, are you kidding me? 01:01:44.180 --> 01:01:51.680 I was like – basically she sent me a picture of herself and she was like, way out of my 01:01:51.680 --> 01:01:53.000 league, you know? 01:01:53.000 --> 01:01:58.450 She was like – like, dude, I’m like a three. 01:01:58.450 --> 01:01:59.450 You know? 01:01:59.450 --> 01:02:02.069 She was an easy ten, you know? 01:02:02.069 --> 01:02:04.470 I was like, what the hell? 01:02:04.470 --> 01:02:06.869 She was like, it’s – who cares? 01:02:06.869 --> 01:02:08.869 She was like, you’re handsome. 01:02:08.869 --> 01:02:12.000 I was like, alright, you’re – whatever, I’m not gonna argue with you. 01:02:12.000 --> 01:02:13.109 I don’t think so. 01:02:13.109 --> 01:02:15.319 I got impostor syndrome. 01:02:15.319 --> 01:02:18.260 I’m like, no way. 01:02:18.260 --> 01:02:19.920 I was like, listen, I’m gonna get twenty years. 01:02:19.920 --> 01:02:23.279 I was like, you know, just forget about me. 01:02:23.279 --> 01:02:26.309 We can be friends and stuff. 01:02:26.309 --> 01:02:28.349 She was like, listen, it’s not all about you. 01:02:28.349 --> 01:02:29.910 I was like, what? 01:02:29.910 --> 01:02:32.349 She was like, I love you. 01:02:32.349 --> 01:02:35.059 I’m not – I don’t care how long you got. 01:02:35.059 --> 01:02:37.920 That was pretty incredible for me. 01:02:37.920 --> 01:02:42.920 But it was – I had had people in the past who had been in my life who had said they 01:02:42.920 --> 01:02:46.910 would stick with me through a prison term and they didn’t. 01:02:46.910 --> 01:02:52.210 So, I was very leery of it and that’s why I kind of just didn’t want her to have to 01:02:52.210 --> 01:02:53.210 deal with that. 01:02:53.210 --> 01:02:58.420 I knew how much pain and agony it was gonna be going forward, and she did. 01:02:58.420 --> 01:02:59.849 Man, it was crazy. 01:02:59.849 --> 01:03:04.859 She stuck with me through my – everything; through my sentencing, through my actual prison 01:03:04.859 --> 01:03:05.859 incarceration, everything. 01:03:05.859 --> 01:03:10.039 JACK: [MUSIC] They moved in together and waited for his court date. 01:03:10.039 --> 01:03:14.440 Now, of course, Sam is super-curious how they caught him. 01:03:14.440 --> 01:03:15.799 He took so many precautions. 01:03:15.799 --> 01:03:17.600 Where did he go wrong? 01:03:17.600 --> 01:03:22.240 So, he looked through his discovery, which is the evidence that the feds had on him, 01:03:22.240 --> 01:03:27.369 and there were three words that he saw on there; Operation Dark Gold. 01:03:27.369 --> 01:03:34.089 SAM: Towards the end, I found this one vendor on the darknet called Gold, G-O-L-D. 01:03:34.089 --> 01:03:43.660 What he would do is he would charge you five to ten percent and you would send him your 01:03:43.660 --> 01:03:47.500 Bitcoin and he would send you cash in the mail. 01:03:47.500 --> 01:03:48.859 I loved that system. 01:03:48.859 --> 01:03:52.840 JACK: Nice, a new way to turn your Bitcoin into cash; just give it to someone and they’ll 01:03:52.840 --> 01:03:54.470 send you the cash in the mail. 01:03:54.470 --> 01:03:59.450 This bypasses the crypto exchanges who like to collect a lot of your personal information. 01:03:59.450 --> 01:04:05.040 This went on well for Sam and Gold for a while, but then something happened where Gold got 01:04:05.040 --> 01:04:09.490 arrested and the feds asked him the same thing they asked Sam. 01:04:09.490 --> 01:04:15.210 Hey, you know a lot about this community; would like you to work for us or go to jail? 01:04:15.210 --> 01:04:20.140 Gold agreed to work with the feds, which became Operation Dark Gold. 01:04:20.140 --> 01:04:25.309 So, that’s when Sam sent him some Bitcoin and he sent Sam some cash. 01:04:25.309 --> 01:04:27.950 But this didn’t make any sense to Sam. 01:04:27.950 --> 01:04:29.349 No, this wasn’t right. 01:04:29.349 --> 01:04:31.430 What law did he break here? 01:04:31.430 --> 01:04:35.520 It’s legal to send your buddy Bitcoin and they give you cash for it. 01:04:35.520 --> 01:04:37.160 There is nothing wrong with that. 01:04:37.160 --> 01:04:40.490 So, he told the feds there’s no crime to exchange Bitcoin for cash. 01:04:40.490 --> 01:04:47.549 SAM: The United States Attorney’s big thing was you paid ten percent to cash out your 01:04:47.549 --> 01:04:52.730 Bitcoin, and that shows criminal intent. 01:04:52.730 --> 01:04:56.490 I was like – the one thing I said to my defense lawyer – I’m like, dude, you know 01:04:56.490 --> 01:05:01.360 there are Bitcoin ATMs that charge ten percent, right? 01:05:01.360 --> 01:05:06.089 It’s not – that makes no sense, you know? 01:05:06.089 --> 01:05:09.579 JACK: So, this still wasn’t adding up for Sam. 01:05:09.579 --> 01:05:13.869 Were the feds just making up crimes to get a search warrant? 01:05:13.869 --> 01:05:18.640 Because if they did get a search warrant under false reasons, then perhaps this case can 01:05:18.640 --> 01:05:19.910 be thrown out. 01:05:19.910 --> 01:05:22.150 So, Sam kept seeking answers. 01:05:22.150 --> 01:05:27.680 SAM: So, what actually happened was my cousin got complacent. 01:05:27.680 --> 01:05:34.470 What she was doing is she would go to the post office with twelve packages. 01:05:34.470 --> 01:05:38.710 Remember what I said; three packages would have one return address on them. 01:05:38.710 --> 01:05:42.410 The next three would have a different return address from a different town. 01:05:42.410 --> 01:05:49.910 So, she’s going there with – our agreed-upon number was three packages and that those three 01:05:49.910 --> 01:05:51.049 packages have the same return address. 01:05:51.049 --> 01:05:56.840 Now she’s going to the post office with twelve, fifteen, twenty packages. 01:05:56.840 --> 01:06:01.180 Remember, every three packages has a different return address. 01:06:01.180 --> 01:06:07.339 So, she’s going there in some cases with six different return addresses. 01:06:07.339 --> 01:06:10.740 So, they’re like, what the hell is this? 01:06:10.740 --> 01:06:16.120 But again, that is not enough for a warrant. 01:06:16.120 --> 01:06:22.070 It’s suspicious and it’s reasonable suspicion, but it is not probable cause. 01:06:22.070 --> 01:06:28.140 So, what ended up happening was the United States Postal Inspector just cut open a package 01:06:28.140 --> 01:06:36.809 with no warrant, cut open the visual barrier, cut open the three layers of vacuum seal, 01:06:36.809 --> 01:06:39.490 and he found some coke. 01:06:39.490 --> 01:06:46.539 Then they used that coke to apply for a federal search warrant for the house after they followed 01:06:46.539 --> 01:06:48.880 my cousin back to the house. 01:06:48.880 --> 01:06:49.910 JACK: Hm. 01:06:49.910 --> 01:06:55.240 SAM: So, for the longest time I was angry at my cousin ‘cause I was like, you didn’t 01:06:55.240 --> 01:07:01.340 follow the security policy and now you’re potentially costing me two hundred years in 01:07:01.340 --> 01:07:06.620 prison because you were too lazy to drive. 01:07:06.620 --> 01:07:10.680 Even though you billed for it, you were too lazy to do your job and drive to these different 01:07:10.680 --> 01:07:12.890 post offices. 01:07:12.890 --> 01:07:17.490 I came to the realization that at the end of the day, it’s not her fault. 01:07:17.490 --> 01:07:19.089 It’s my fault. 01:07:19.089 --> 01:07:22.070 I was in charge, right? 01:07:22.070 --> 01:07:28.690 It was on me to supervise her and I didn’t do a good enough job doing that, and that’s 01:07:28.690 --> 01:07:30.000 why we got raided. 01:07:30.000 --> 01:07:35.890 So, even – my opsec at the end of the day and my information security policies were 01:07:35.890 --> 01:07:39.770 so on point that I would have never had an issue with law enforcement. 01:07:39.770 --> 01:07:48.220 JACK: So, to kinda prove that, Hansa went down – your stuff is all over that database. 01:07:48.220 --> 01:07:49.900 That was taken over by the feds. 01:07:49.900 --> 01:07:50.900 SAM: Yep. 01:07:50.900 --> 01:07:52.839 JACK: They did a massive arrest through that. 01:07:52.839 --> 01:07:53.839 SAM: Yep. 01:07:53.839 --> 01:07:56.060 JACK: Hundreds of people in the US. 01:07:56.060 --> 01:07:59.020 Hansa was European, but they did a lot… 01:07:59.020 --> 01:08:00.020 SAM: Operation Bayonet, yeah. 01:08:00.020 --> 01:08:01.020 JACK: Mm-hm. 01:08:01.020 --> 01:08:04.849 They did hundreds of arrests in the US for dealers, mostly vendors. 01:08:04.849 --> 01:08:10.369 You weren’t one of them, so that kinda proves that you were – opsec was tight. 01:08:10.369 --> 01:08:12.100 SAM: Right, right. 01:08:12.100 --> 01:08:18.280 So, I had gotten – in my discovery – I had gotten times when I looked through my 01:08:18.280 --> 01:08:24.180 discovery and the feds actually bought drugs off me, like, twenty times. 01:08:24.180 --> 01:08:27.950 They bought coke, they bought LSD, they bought cannabis. 01:08:27.950 --> 01:08:35.779 The only thing they didn’t buy was moonshine, but they bought pretty much everything. 01:08:35.779 --> 01:08:40.600 There was nothing from – there was no fingerprints, there’s no hair, not even microscopic DNA. 01:08:40.600 --> 01:08:41.600 There’s nothing. 01:08:41.600 --> 01:08:49.609 At the end of the day, again, it was like, that smallest little thing is what caused 01:08:49.609 --> 01:08:58.339 it and that was her complacency and my being overwhelmed, doing all these jobs, having 01:08:58.339 --> 01:09:09.580 my attention so divided that I did not do a proper job in monitoring her and making 01:09:09.580 --> 01:09:11.910 sure that she was doing her job correctly. 01:09:11.910 --> 01:09:15.520 [MUSIC] What ended up happening was my lawyer had applied for what’s called a Frank’s 01:09:15.520 --> 01:09:16.520 Hearing. 01:09:16.520 --> 01:09:20.620 A Frank’s Hearing is when you can show law enforcement broke the law in order to catch 01:09:20.620 --> 01:09:21.620 you. 01:09:21.620 --> 01:09:25.799 This was my security policy from the start. 01:09:25.799 --> 01:09:30.259 It was like, if you guys are gonna catch me, I’m gonna make this maze so complicated 01:09:30.259 --> 01:09:34.160 that you’re gonna have to jump over a wall in order to do it. 01:09:34.160 --> 01:09:38.130 Then of course it’s that whole thing you see on Law & Order where it’s like, oh, 01:09:38.130 --> 01:09:43.080 fruit of the poisonous tree; they broke the law in order to do this, so everything’s 01:09:43.080 --> 01:09:45.339 invalidated, and that was another part of my plan. 01:09:45.339 --> 01:09:48.460 That’s why I was ready to admit to it so readily. 01:09:48.460 --> 01:09:49.460 I knew my rights. 01:09:49.460 --> 01:09:52.890 I knew I wasn’t under any obligation to talk. 01:09:52.890 --> 01:09:57.840 I knew that I was better off asking for a lawyer, but I also knew that they would most 01:09:57.840 --> 01:09:59.860 likely have to break the law in order to bust me. 01:09:59.860 --> 01:10:04.790 If that’s the case and I admit to everything and they get everything, everything’s got. 01:10:04.790 --> 01:10:06.860 There’s nothing else they can do. 01:10:06.860 --> 01:10:13.500 If everything from that arrest – from that original search warrant is thrown out, there’s 01:10:13.500 --> 01:10:14.500 no case. 01:10:14.500 --> 01:10:17.909 Now keep in mind, the feds have a conviction rate of 99%. 01:10:17.909 --> 01:10:19.260 They don’t lose. 01:10:19.260 --> 01:10:24.650 It’s like you playing chess with me and I tell you all my pawns are queens. 01:10:24.650 --> 01:10:26.690 I’m not gonna lose, you know? 01:10:26.690 --> 01:10:29.060 So, that’s what it’s like playing them. 01:10:29.060 --> 01:10:31.900 So now I got this Frank’s Hearing scheduled. 01:10:31.900 --> 01:10:37.940 Now, that said, with this Frank’s Hearing scheduled – a Frank’s Hearing is very 01:10:37.940 --> 01:10:39.170 difficult to get. 01:10:39.170 --> 01:10:41.830 It’s super, super hard to get. 01:10:41.830 --> 01:10:47.830 So, the United States Attorney, contacts my lawyer and tells her, I don’t want to go 01:10:47.830 --> 01:10:49.400 to this Frank’s Hearing. 01:10:49.400 --> 01:10:51.260 So, my lawyer contacts me. 01:10:51.260 --> 01:10:53.330 She’s like, oh, he said he doesn’t want to go to this Frank’s Hearing. 01:10:53.330 --> 01:10:57.489 I was like, yeah, I bet he doesn’t want to go to this Frank’s Hearing. 01:10:57.489 --> 01:11:03.380 We’re gonna prove everything that they – first off, everything you got was – it was done 01:11:03.380 --> 01:11:04.469 so illegally. 01:11:04.469 --> 01:11:11.260 So, I guess you – he told her – he was like, listen, tell him that if he pleads guilty, 01:11:11.260 --> 01:11:16.140 I’ll give him a maximum of 108 months, which is like, nine years. 01:11:16.140 --> 01:11:20.929 So, if he doesn’t and we go to this Frank’s Hearing, he’ll get nine of the ten of his 01:11:20.929 --> 01:11:25.760 charges dropped but he won’t get his conspiracy charge dropped. 01:11:25.760 --> 01:11:28.100 I was like, well, what’s he mean? 01:11:28.100 --> 01:11:29.909 She was like, oh, did you read your PSR? 01:11:29.909 --> 01:11:32.929 So, a PSR is a pre-sentence report. 01:11:32.929 --> 01:11:34.690 It’s basically the background of your whole life. 01:11:34.690 --> 01:11:36.030 So, I was like, no. 01:11:36.030 --> 01:11:38.070 So, I went and I looked at it. 01:11:38.070 --> 01:11:39.570 It was like, Page 15. 01:11:39.570 --> 01:11:43.470 On that page it said my cousin’s proffer. 01:11:43.470 --> 01:11:48.489 So, when I had first gotten arraigned – after I got out, I got released on my own recognizance. 01:11:48.489 --> 01:11:52.280 After I got out, my lawyer had called me up and she was like, oh, do you want to come 01:11:52.280 --> 01:11:54.139 in and do a proffer? 01:11:54.139 --> 01:11:55.750 I was like, what’s a proffer? 01:11:55.750 --> 01:12:00.679 She was like, well, a proffer is when you come in and you tell them what you did, who 01:12:00.679 --> 01:12:07.030 you worked for, who bought off you, who did what, what vendors that you worked with and 01:12:07.030 --> 01:12:08.800 what you know about them. 01:12:08.800 --> 01:12:11.770 I was like, yo, man, that sounds kinda like snitching to me. 01:12:11.770 --> 01:12:14.460 She was like, well, we don’t call it that. 01:12:14.460 --> 01:12:16.679 I was like, well, the people I work with would. 01:12:16.679 --> 01:12:18.270 You know what I mean? 01:12:18.270 --> 01:12:20.989 No, I’m not doing that. 01:12:20.989 --> 01:12:24.250 That’s a death sentence for not just me, but my family. 01:12:24.250 --> 01:12:27.610 But aside from that, I’m just not on that kinda time. 01:12:27.610 --> 01:12:28.770 I’m good, you know? 01:12:28.770 --> 01:12:33.640 I’m not gonna put people in a box ‘cause I’m scared about being in a box. 01:12:33.640 --> 01:12:34.640 You know? 01:12:34.640 --> 01:12:37.550 Like, what I – I’m a man, so what I did – I’ll accept responsibility for it. 01:12:37.550 --> 01:12:39.360 So, she’s like, alright. 01:12:39.360 --> 01:12:42.540 So, when they were like, oh, did you read your PSR? 01:12:42.540 --> 01:12:44.159 Go read Page 15 or whatever. 01:12:44.159 --> 01:12:47.610 I went back and I see my cousin’s proffer. 01:12:47.610 --> 01:12:50.790 Immediately I know what a proffer is now. 01:12:50.790 --> 01:12:57.570 [LAUGHING] I go through it and it says, like, your cousin proffered on you. 01:12:57.570 --> 01:13:02.370 She confessed to all this stuff, like all – like, he had me send these packages out. 01:13:02.370 --> 01:13:04.610 I didn’t know what was in the packages. 01:13:04.610 --> 01:13:08.949 I’m like, you got a percentage of every – everything that was in the package you 01:13:08.949 --> 01:13:14.080 got a percentage of, you know? 01:13:14.080 --> 01:13:16.389 You helped me with the labels. 01:13:16.389 --> 01:13:17.639 What? 01:13:17.639 --> 01:13:18.810 It was just completely mind-blowing. 01:13:18.810 --> 01:13:23.520 JACK: What I understand a proffer agreement to be is where you admit to what you’ve 01:13:23.520 --> 01:13:26.550 done to get a reduced sentence. 01:13:26.550 --> 01:13:30.760 With his cousin, the information she provided in the proffer was enough to make it so she 01:13:30.760 --> 01:13:32.900 didn’t get any prison time at all. 01:13:32.900 --> 01:13:36.220 It was good for her, but bad for Sam. 01:13:36.220 --> 01:13:41.230 Sam was upset because he told her to admit to nothing and he’d take full blame for 01:13:41.230 --> 01:13:42.230 it. 01:13:42.230 --> 01:13:45.060 I don’t know what made her deviate from the plan. 01:13:45.060 --> 01:13:48.930 Perhaps she just wanted to get rid of a guilty conscience. 01:13:48.930 --> 01:13:54.659 Sam’s big plan was if the cops raid the house and take everything, and even if he 01:13:54.659 --> 01:13:59.530 admitted to everything, he was going to prove to the judge that the cops broke the law to 01:13:59.530 --> 01:14:03.800 get evidence on him, which would make his case invalid. 01:14:03.800 --> 01:14:07.989 He thought this would work because Operation Dark Gold wasn’t enough evidence and the 01:14:07.989 --> 01:14:12.590 post office opened a package without a warrant, and that was a big deal. 01:14:12.590 --> 01:14:16.070 If he could prove they broke the law, then he thought it would mean that they would have 01:14:16.070 --> 01:14:19.960 to throw out all this evidence on him and let him go. 01:14:19.960 --> 01:14:22.790 But this plan backfired. 01:14:22.790 --> 01:14:26.420 His cousin told all, giving the prosecutors more evidence. 01:14:26.420 --> 01:14:31.670 So, he’s faced with a new decision; either get a Frank’s Hearing to prove that the 01:14:31.670 --> 01:14:36.830 police broke the law to bust him – which may or may not go his way and even if it did 01:14:36.830 --> 01:14:40.840 go his way, he’d still have a conspiracy charge that could get him twenty to thirty 01:14:40.840 --> 01:14:48.090 years in prison – or simply admit to being guilty, take a plea deal, and get a maximum 01:14:48.090 --> 01:14:49.680 of nine years in prison. 01:14:49.680 --> 01:14:54.980 Suddenly the Frank’s Hearing seemed like more of a gamble and the nine years seemed 01:14:54.980 --> 01:14:56.780 like the better option. 01:14:56.780 --> 01:15:03.260 So, he took the plea deal and admitted he was guilty. 01:15:03.260 --> 01:15:07.250 Somewhere around this time, his girlfriend and him got married, and they were living 01:15:07.250 --> 01:15:10.970 together, waiting for the big sentencing hearing. 01:15:10.970 --> 01:15:17.140 The sentencing day came and the judge sentenced him to sixty months in prison, which is five 01:15:17.140 --> 01:15:18.140 years. 01:15:18.140 --> 01:15:23.520 During his time in prison his wife would visit him frequently, giving him hope and encouragement 01:15:23.520 --> 01:15:25.219 to stay positive. 01:15:25.219 --> 01:15:30.989 Sam was due to be released from prison in 2024, but he educated himself in the law library 01:15:30.989 --> 01:15:37.280 in prison and applied for compassionate release, which he was granted and let out after only 01:15:37.280 --> 01:15:42.970 serving eighteen months in prison instead of the five years he was supposed to serve. 01:15:42.970 --> 01:15:48.340 When he got out, his wife was right there waiting for him, happy he was out of prison. 01:15:48.340 --> 01:15:52.310 After he got out of prison, he wanted to help others fight the law, and went back to school 01:15:52.310 --> 01:15:56.100 and graduated and became a paralegal, which is what he’s doing now. 01:15:56.100 --> 01:16:00.140 He even wrote a book about how to write a compelling, compassionate release motion, 01:16:00.140 --> 01:16:05.050 and he’s also making YouTube videos and blog posts and giving talks about his story. 01:16:05.050 --> 01:16:10.440 (OUTRO): [OUTRO MUSIC] A big thank you to Sam Bent, AKA DoingFedTime, AKA killab, AKA 01:16:10.440 --> 01:16:15.989 2happytimes2…you can learn more about him by visiting the website doingfedtime.com, 01:16:15.989 --> 01:16:17.870 or search for Doingfedtime on YouTube. 01:16:17.870 --> 01:16:21.739 I’m going to be releasing new episodes of this show every month from now on, so I’ll 01:16:21.739 --> 01:16:22.739 see you next month. 01:16:22.739 --> 01:16:23.739 This show is made by me, the cowboy coder, Jack Rhysider, editing help this episode by 01:16:23.739 --> 01:16:24.739 Tristan Ledger, mixing done by Proximity Sound, and our theme music is done by the rollerblading 01:16:24.739 --> 01:16:25.739 Breakmaster Cylinder. 01:16:25.739 --> 01:16:26.739 Why did the capacitor kiss the diode? 01:16:26.739 --> 01:16:27.739 He couldn’t resist her. 01:16:27.739 --> 01:16:27.743 This is Darknet Diaries.