WEBVTT

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JACK: [MUSIC] Hello.

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This is an episode about darknet marketplaces, and it has swear words and it talks about

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drugs throughout the whole episode.

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It might not be appropriate for some audiences, so consider this a content warning.

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Also, I highly recommend that you listen to Episode 24 first.

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It’s called Operation Bayonet and it goes into depth of what darknet marketplace are,

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like AlphaBay, and there’s some overlap between this episode and that one, and it’s

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just good to have a strong reference point of the whole scene before getting into this

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one.

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Okay, with that housekeeping out of the way, let’s get into the episode.

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(INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC] These are true stories from the dark side of the internet.

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I’m Jack Rhysider.

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This is Darknet Diaries.

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[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

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JACK: In this episode, we’ll hear a story from Arya Ebrahami.

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Arya is no stranger to trouble.

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ARYA: So, I had been getting in trouble my entire life, man.

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Just like, disciplinary issues since I was a kid; bringing knives to school in elementary.

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I got expelled.

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By the time ninth grade came around, they finally let me back into my county’s public

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school.

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I messed that up; I brought weed to school.

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Obviously schools have a zero-tolerance policy for drugs, so I got expelled again, and…

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JACK: How old were you then?

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ARYA: I was fourteen at the time, in ninth grade.

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JACK: How did you get weed when you were fourteen?

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ARYA: Honestly, you know what?

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I do remember, actually.

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I visited my sister when she was in college and that was the first time I smoked weed.

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I was actually twelve years old then.

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JACK: Now, of course, his parents weren’t happy that he was expelled from school for

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drugs.

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They had big dreams of what Arya may become, and wanted him to succeed.

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ARYA: Yeah, dude.

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You know, it’s the Middle Eastern dream.

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It’s like, you could have been professional doctor, you could have been professional lawyer,

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you could have been policeman, but no; you want to be professional felony.

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I’m like, you mean felon?

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But yeah, man.

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It’s a lot of high hopes being from a Middle Eastern family.

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JACK: His parents immigrated to the US before he was born and did pretty well for themselves.

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ARYA: They came from Iran.

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My dad came here in ‘87, I believe.

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My mom came here in ‘93.

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Yeah, so, full citizens now, though; just a disclaimer.

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JACK: Arya lived at home with his mother and father in Virginia, not too far from Washington,

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DC.

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But the school would not let him come back after this whole weed incident at all.

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He was permanently expelled.

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His parents found him a remote learning academy where he could take courses online, so he

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did that for his tenth grade year.

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ARYA: Eleventh grade, I got accepted into a Christian school.

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No other school would accept me, which is when everything started, pretty much.

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That’s when the whole crime spree started.

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JACK: [MUSIC] The crime spree started when he wanted to buy a fake ID.

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ARYA: I just want things that I can’t have, so that’s originally why I started getting

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the fake IDs.

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At the same time, man, I think a part of me wanted to feel accepted.

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I was so left out of so much shit and I just kept getting in trouble.

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I just – I was looking for a home.

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I needed friends and I just wanted to fit in, you know?

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I wanted people to like me.

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I wanted to be the cool kid, you know?

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I can get the alcohol for the parties and whatnot.

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So, that’s originally what had me start my venture searching for fakes.

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JACK: He goes online, finds a few websites in China that are selling fake IDs.

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He sends them money but gets nothing back.

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He was scammed three times trying to buy fake IDs this way.

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ARYA: I’m pretty sure it was the same asshole that got me every single time.

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That’s the worst part about it.

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But I’m sending money, man.

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After the third time of getting scammed, I was like fuck this, dude.

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Why don’t I just learn how to make them?

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JACK: So, he goes online to try to figure out how to make a fake ID himself, and he

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finds this website called reallygoodfakes.com.

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ARYA: On their homepage they had a video of them making a New York drivers license, like

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their step-by-step type thing to show we’re not scammers.

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So, I’m watching this video, I’m taking note of everything I can in this video; I’m

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looking at the printers they’re using, the type of papers they’re using, I’m looking

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at their template.

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I’m like okay, so, I have everything, I have all the equipment.

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I know what I need to get.

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Now, how do I get this template so I can print these fakes?

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I can just edit it in Photoshop.

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So, I started going on Google.

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JACK: He eventually finds a website that had a bunch of Photoshop files of different state

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drivers licenses.

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These were the templates where he could just insert the photo of a person, change the name,

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and hit Print.

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This is what he was looking for, but the only state he knew how to make was New York, since

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that’s what that website taught him how to make.

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ARYA: So, I told a couple of friends.

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I remember at the time I was in – I was – this was tenth grade going into eleventh

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grade, so this is like, summer of 2012.

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So, I asked my older friends who are already eighteen, and I’m like hey guys, get me

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some startup money.

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I’ll make you some fakes.

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[MUSIC] So, this is the funniest part.

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So, I get four friends.

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My friend gets four of his friends; they all invest like, twenty-five bucks into me.

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I go to Staples and I buy the shittiest printer you can find.

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It’s not even the one that was in the video.

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I buy a shitty printer, I buy computer paper, and I buy lamination from Staples.

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Everything from Staples.

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I come home and I download the template, I downloaded Photoshop, I edit it, and I printed

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out a New York template with the name edited and my friends’ pictures on there.

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I’ve printed it out – I cut it out with scissors because I didn’t have a card-cutter

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at the time.

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I didn’t have enough money.

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This is just like the start.

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I had no startup money.

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So, I’m trying as best as I can to carefully cut the ID off the computer paper.

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The final result was the worst, shittiest, lowest-quality New York fake ID you can find.

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So, I give them to my friends.

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I held up my part of the bargain which is in exchange for your investment, I’ll make

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you guys fakes.

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These are the type of fakes that you can’t take out of your wallet.

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You kinda just slap it in the cashier’s face.

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Like, you see it, you see it, you see it.

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It worked though, man.

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It worked.

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JACK: It worked for what?

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What did your friends buy?

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ARYA: They ended up going – they had Beach Week, actually.

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They would text me while they were there, like, it worked.

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I’m like, there’s no fucking way in hell that shit worked.

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I’m using an Inkjet printer, man, on computer paper with clear lamination that’s like,

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1 mm thick.

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There’s no way this worked.

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These IDs don’t scan.

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They have barcodes on them; god knows what the barcodes say or what they’re encoded

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with, because I wasn’t encoding the bar codes at the time.

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They had no UV holograms.

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They had no holograms, period.

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They just worked, though.

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JACK: Soon after that, people in his town knew that Arya could hook you up with a fake

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ID.

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So, he makes some more and sells them to people around town.

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This gives him more money to buy the right equipment, so he reinvests in this illicit

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fake ID company; buying a better printer, the right kind of lamination, and he even

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gets the barcode to actually scan if someone were to scan it.

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Which, by the way, the barcode data is just what’s on the card itself, so it’s possible

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to generate it yourself.

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ARYA: So, I got this – I got everything down.

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Now I have to figure out how to get the UV holograms, like the holograms that show up

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when you put it under a black light.

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JACK: Not a problem for a resourceful sixteen-year-old kid.

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A few Google searches shows him exactly where to buy the UV ink and printer.

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He orders it from his phone while in first period class, and gets it shipped to his house.

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When it gets there, he prints a new ID with the UV ink.

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ARYA: So, I run it under my black light, man, and when that fucking hologram popped up on

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there that was invisible to the naked eye, when I saw it, I was like dude, these things

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are fucking official.

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It’s a go.

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It’s go-time now.

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JACK: These IDs weren’t perfect, but they were pretty good.

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So now, it was time to start selling them.

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ARYA: So, the original goal was to just do it locally.

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I had met somebody on Xbox though, many years ago, three years prior to all of this, in

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2010.

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This person is – he was really good with web development, you know?

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So, I had reached out to him and I was like dude, can you make a website?

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Can you make me a website?

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Yeah, he ended up doing just that.

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JACK: [MUSIC] To advertise his website, Arya decided to use YouTube.

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Specifically, he would go into the comment section of YouTube videos that he thinks maybe

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his customers would watch, and then he would post a link to his fake ID website.

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Now, the funny thing here is that Arya used a YouTube account which had his real name

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on it, because he was just sixteen and just didn’t think it through enough.

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But pasting links to his website all over YouTube was actually working.

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People were coming to his website and buying fake IDs.

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ARYA: At the time, because Bitcoin was not really that big yet, which didn’t happen

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for years later, I was only accepting Green Dot money pack codes.

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JACK: This is a way to send money to any prepaid debit card, and it’s mostly anonymous since

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you can buy the card in a store with cash, and you just need to send the code that’s

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on the back of the card to someone in order to give them money.

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This was going well.

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Not huge, but it was bringing in more money to buy even better equipment with, which allowed

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him to expand and make other states.

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Illinois was the next state he started making and selling IDs for.

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Month after month, he continues this process into 2013.

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He keeps posting links in the YouTube comments to his site, and word-of-mouth is helping

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it grow, too.

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ARYA: So, that goes on, man, and everything’s all good.

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Everything’s good.

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I’m making a lot of money at this point.

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I’m probably raking in like, a thousand bucks a week.

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JACK: He’d get somewhere between three to ten orders a day, and then come home from

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school and spend a few hours every day creating these fake IDs.

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ARYA: So, I’d spend a couple hours a day, every day, after I came home from school.

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My room smelled like burning plastic.

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My parents obviously ended up smelling it and they would see it.

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They would come in, man, they would see this, and they were just so disappointed but they

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know at this point they can’t tell me anything because I’m making enough money for me to

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move out.

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I don’t think they wanted that.

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JACK: He was getting all kinds of weird orders, too, so he had to start making some rules

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on who he would sell fake IDs to.

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ARYA: The original thing was that we would not sell to anybody that was over twenty-one

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or that looked over twenty-one, because my entire thought was why would people who are

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over twenty-one need IDs unless it was for fraud or terrorism, or something serious?

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I also had a rule that if you looked too young, I wouldn’t give you a fake ID.

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I’d just deny your order.

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I actually stuck to that, man.

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Believe it or not, I really stuck to that, because I didn’t believe in – like, if

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you’re fifteen, I think that’s too young to be going to try to buy alcohol.

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You could really get hurt.

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I don’t know, I had some sort of conscience at the time.

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If you looked over – too old, I’m like, why do you need a fake?

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That doesn’t make sense to me.

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So, any time someone looked any – the only people I would approve were the ones that

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looked anywhere between seventeen to twenty.

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I’d use my best judgement and based off that, I’d make their order.

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JACK: Things were going good.

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Months go by and the business continued to grow.

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He had saved up almost $10,000 by May.

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But then something happened which ruined everything.

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One day, he went on one of the fake ID forums and saw that someone doxxed him.

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[MUSIC] They posted his picture and name and address for anyone to see.

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ARYA: They put it out all over the internet; noveltyidstore.com is a scam run by Arya Ebrahami.

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It was just – it was bad, man.

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I got doxxed and we shut down the website.

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I was like dude, I was so sloppy with this.

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People can’t know.

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JACK: It’s kinda funny; he called his website Novelty ID Store, which I think was a veiled

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attempt at trying to make it look like it was a legal site, but it really wasn’t.

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Manufacturing fake IDs is highly illegal, and now his real name and address is out there

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tied to it and exposed to the public.

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He thought for a while, who would do this to him?

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He determined it must have been a competitor fake ID website.

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ARYA: It was a guy named Delaware Fakes.

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He was a whole separate company.

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I had actually tried making an order from them the year prior to me learning how to

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make fakes, and I had gotten scammed by them, too.

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But they still had my order information and my picture, so they were the first people

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to dox me.

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JACK: So, he shut down that website and was done.

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This actually scared him.

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He knew this was illegal and didn’t want to get caught, so he distanced himself from

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this.

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But man, he looked at that money he made from this and it was nice, really nice.

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He had all this equipment and knew how to make fake IDs pretty well at this point.

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So maybe there’s another way to sell fake IDs.

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That’s when he stumbled onto Silk Road, a darknet marketplace which primarily sold

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drugs on it, but also had some fake IDs for sale there, too.

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He decided to make a vendor account on Silk Road to sell fake IDs.

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ARYA: There was only two of us.

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There was two vendors on Silk Road for fake IDs.

00:13:59.019 --> 00:14:01.950
So, there was Ted Danzig and then there was me.

00:14:01.950 --> 00:14:04.260
I offered Illinois and he offered Ohio.

00:14:04.260 --> 00:14:09.709
JACK: So, Arya jumped in and started listing his fake-ID-making service on the site.

00:14:09.709 --> 00:14:15.430
His vendor name there was Oracle, and the price was $150 per fake ID.

00:14:15.430 --> 00:14:21.959
ARYA: Man, let me tell you, dude; that – I got more business from Silk Road 1 than I

00:14:21.959 --> 00:14:23.880
had ever gotten from my website.

00:14:23.880 --> 00:14:25.800
It was insane.

00:14:25.800 --> 00:14:27.199
It was just ludicrous.

00:14:27.199 --> 00:14:33.320
So, what used to be two hours I spent a day became literally every waking hour I’d come

00:14:33.320 --> 00:14:36.920
home from school until I went to sleep – was making fake IDs.

00:14:36.920 --> 00:14:42.949
I am now seventeen years old and I’m making like, $10,000 a month.

00:14:42.949 --> 00:14:44.670
It was just – it was disgusting.

00:14:44.670 --> 00:14:46.210
I’m getting paid in Bitcoin, dude.

00:14:46.210 --> 00:14:47.490
I’m literally getting paid in Bitcoin.

00:14:47.490 --> 00:14:52.880
I’m getting paid like – I ended up – my wallet, at the height of it all, the most

00:14:52.880 --> 00:14:55.110
I had at one time was like, 234.

00:14:55.110 --> 00:15:02.779
JACK: In 2013, the price for one Bitcoin was about $100, so his 234 Bitcoins was worth

00:15:02.779 --> 00:15:03.779
about $23,000.

00:15:03.779 --> 00:15:09.180
Now, keep in mind, he’s still in high school at this time, so he’s living sort of a double

00:15:09.180 --> 00:15:10.180
life.

00:15:10.180 --> 00:15:14.670
ARYA: [MUSIC] The double life was being a church boy on the surface when I was going

00:15:14.670 --> 00:15:21.230
to this Christian school, and then coming home and hammering out a hundred fake IDs.

00:15:21.230 --> 00:15:23.250
That year, actually, I started using Adderall.

00:15:23.250 --> 00:15:29.089
So, I’d take my Adderall in the morning time, I’d go to this Christian school, and

00:15:29.089 --> 00:15:31.550
it was under control for a little while.

00:15:31.550 --> 00:15:38.040
I’d come home from school and get on the dark web, start punching out IDs, and yeah.

00:15:38.040 --> 00:15:44.620
JACK: Adderall is typically prescribed to people with ADHD, but because it creates dopamine

00:15:44.620 --> 00:15:48.649
and serotonin in the brain, people take it to get euphoric feelings.

00:15:48.649 --> 00:15:53.829
You’ve got to be careful with this stuff though, because if your body relies on drugs

00:15:53.829 --> 00:15:59.930
to produce dopamine, it might forget how to naturally do that itself, which is what causes

00:15:59.930 --> 00:16:01.149
addiction.

00:16:01.149 --> 00:16:05.810
Arya tried to keep it under control and only took one pill a day.

00:16:05.810 --> 00:16:09.240
This helped him stay on top of all the work he needed to do.

00:16:09.240 --> 00:16:12.990
He took Adderall all through his high school years.

00:16:12.990 --> 00:16:19.279
Arya was now seventeen years old and his opsec was not that great.

00:16:19.279 --> 00:16:24.089
This means he didn’t have the best security in mind when he was running this business

00:16:24.089 --> 00:16:25.920
on a darknet marketplace.

00:16:25.920 --> 00:16:30.650
Like, he would use his own handwriting to hand-write the labels of all the envelopes

00:16:30.650 --> 00:16:34.209
that got shipped out, and his fingerprints were all over these packages.

00:16:34.209 --> 00:16:40.160
He made up a street as a return address, but he still used his same city and zip code on

00:16:40.160 --> 00:16:41.160
it.

00:16:41.160 --> 00:16:45.600
At this point, he was getting so many orders that he just stopped having any rules on who

00:16:45.600 --> 00:16:47.529
could get an ID and who couldn’t.

00:16:47.529 --> 00:16:49.529
ARYA: On Silk Road, I didn’t give a fuck.

00:16:49.529 --> 00:16:53.060
I wasn’t even – I like, threw that rule out the window.

00:16:53.060 --> 00:16:54.910
I just wasn’t paying attention anymore.

00:16:54.910 --> 00:16:57.069
I made every order that came in on Silk Road.

00:16:57.069 --> 00:16:59.630
I made it and I sent it.

00:16:59.630 --> 00:17:04.299
JACK: Now, you might be wondering, how bad could it be if someone buys a fake ID?

00:17:04.299 --> 00:17:09.669
Well, there’s a lot of criminal activity you can do with a fake ID, and not just buying

00:17:09.669 --> 00:17:11.410
alcohol or cigarettes.

00:17:11.410 --> 00:17:17.260
[MUSIC] There’s one story about a teenager who bought a fake ID from Ted Danzig off of

00:17:17.260 --> 00:17:24.380
Silk Road and then used it illegally to buy a firearm, and then used that firearm to shoot

00:17:24.380 --> 00:17:26.689
and kill a police officer.

00:17:26.689 --> 00:17:31.590
Fake IDs are used a lot by carders, too; people who steal credit cards and need to cash out

00:17:31.590 --> 00:17:32.590
on them.

00:17:32.590 --> 00:17:36.230
They’ll call Western Union and use their stolen credit card to send money to their

00:17:36.230 --> 00:17:40.720
fake name and fake ID, and then go pick up the stolen cash using the fake ID.

00:17:40.720 --> 00:17:45.919
In fact, Arya was making his own fake IDs to go pick up payments from Western Union,

00:17:45.919 --> 00:17:46.919
too.

00:17:46.919 --> 00:17:50.440
ARYA: One of my payment options later on in a different website was accepting Western

00:17:50.440 --> 00:17:52.831
Union, and I had like, ten different fake IDs.

00:17:52.831 --> 00:17:57.799
I would go all throughout the Northern Virginia area to pick up the money, which was another

00:17:57.799 --> 00:18:01.450
huge opsec issue, because here I am picking up the money.

00:18:01.450 --> 00:18:06.820
My face is on camera, so all the feds have to do is make a fake order for themselves,

00:18:06.820 --> 00:18:10.669
see where the money was picked up, and then look at the camera, and there I am, smiling

00:18:10.669 --> 00:18:11.920
right there, waving at them.

00:18:11.920 --> 00:18:15.740
JACK: So, he continues this operation all through the summer and into his senior year

00:18:15.740 --> 00:18:16.740
of high school.

00:18:16.740 --> 00:18:19.049
He was making thousands of dollars doing this.

00:18:19.049 --> 00:18:22.120
ARYA: I had made so much money, I didn’t know what to do with it.

00:18:22.120 --> 00:18:26.140
I would go to like, Chipotle, and every day after school, dude, they had – I’d go

00:18:26.140 --> 00:18:30.130
to Chipotle or Five Guys and I would give the cashier like, two hundred bucks, and I’d

00:18:30.130 --> 00:18:32.660
say, just pay for everyone until the money runs out.

00:18:32.660 --> 00:18:37.159
I just – making so much, I was buying – I had everything I wanted.

00:18:37.159 --> 00:18:40.620
Most of my money, man – my priorities have shifted now, but my money back then was spent

00:18:40.620 --> 00:18:48.030
on designer clothes and just – I bought this nine – my fan is actually on right

00:18:48.030 --> 00:18:49.030
now.

00:18:49.030 --> 00:18:50.370
I think it was my first big purchase.

00:18:50.370 --> 00:18:55.299
It was a $900 fan, a Dyson fan that’s like a bladeless – you know, the ones that don’t

00:18:55.299 --> 00:18:56.299
have blades in them.

00:18:56.299 --> 00:18:57.850
The air just kinda comes out of the side.

00:18:57.850 --> 00:18:59.050
It’s blowing on me right now.

00:18:59.050 --> 00:19:04.020
I’m looking at this thing like dude, you’re my first big purchase.

00:19:04.020 --> 00:19:06.220
Nine hundred bucks on a fucking fan.

00:19:06.220 --> 00:19:07.300
Like, why?

00:19:07.300 --> 00:19:11.630
JACK: He was driving a Mercedes at the time, but he didn’t pay for it.

00:19:11.630 --> 00:19:16.960
ARYA: Yeah it was a C240 and I got that summer of 2013.

00:19:16.960 --> 00:19:23.429
Our neighbor was actually selling it for like, $8,000 and it only had like, 40,000 miles

00:19:23.429 --> 00:19:25.120
on it.

00:19:25.120 --> 00:19:29.710
As a gift for me getting my license, my parents got me a car, I guess.

00:19:29.710 --> 00:19:33.870
JACK: Things were going way better than expected for Arya.

00:19:33.870 --> 00:19:37.960
No need to expand or do more since he’s barely able to keep up with the orders that

00:19:37.960 --> 00:19:39.020
are coming in.

00:19:39.020 --> 00:19:45.470
But then, on October 2nd, 2013, everything came crashing down.

00:19:45.470 --> 00:19:51.049
The FBI arrested the owner of Silk Road [MUSIC] and seized the site.

00:19:51.049 --> 00:19:54.500
ARYA: My mom had picked me up from school that day.

00:19:54.500 --> 00:20:00.110
I used to access Silk Road from Tor on my phone all the time, all day throughout school

00:20:00.110 --> 00:20:05.309
so I can get myself excited, so like, when I get out of school, I can make these IDs

00:20:05.309 --> 00:20:08.200
or whatever and see how much money I got today.

00:20:08.200 --> 00:20:13.909
We went out to eat and I remember getting on my phone while we were eating and I saw

00:20:13.909 --> 00:20:17.400
the banner, like, the ‘This site – this hidden service has been seized.’

00:20:17.400 --> 00:20:23.410
Bitcoin at the time, I think it was like $101 or something like that.

00:20:23.410 --> 00:20:24.909
It was so low, dude.

00:20:24.909 --> 00:20:27.160
It was in the low hundreds.

00:20:27.160 --> 00:20:28.799
I went to check my Coinbase account…

00:20:28.799 --> 00:20:32.620
JACK: Coinbase is a website used to convert Bitcoin into US dollars.

00:20:32.620 --> 00:20:36.320
ARYA: …Bitcoin had dropped from like, $101 to $93.

00:20:36.320 --> 00:20:41.580
I’m freaking out ‘cause I got 234 of them.

00:20:41.580 --> 00:20:42.580
I’m like fuck, fuck.

00:20:42.580 --> 00:20:43.860
Dude, I gotta sell right now.

00:20:43.860 --> 00:20:45.120
It’s over for me.

00:20:45.120 --> 00:20:46.760
I’m gonna be broke.

00:20:46.760 --> 00:20:50.940
So, I sold all of my Bitcoin, dude.

00:20:50.940 --> 00:20:55.870
Literally all of it for like, $23,000. 234 Bitcoin for 23k.

00:20:55.870 --> 00:21:01.870
JACK: Criminals back then would use Bitcoin as a way to accept and send payments anonymously.

00:21:01.870 --> 00:21:05.970
It was more convenient than Western Union or Green Dot money packs.

00:21:05.970 --> 00:21:11.970
But little did they know that Bitcoin was going to grow from $100 per coin to over $50,000

00:21:11.970 --> 00:21:14.630
per coin in the next eight years.

00:21:14.630 --> 00:21:19.140
But when Silk Road was taken down, Arya’s fake ID business came to a complete halt.

00:21:19.140 --> 00:21:23.250
He suddenly went from having tons of orders to fill to zero.

00:21:23.250 --> 00:21:29.559
But by this point, he had developed a bit of a habit of spending money, a lot, and this

00:21:29.559 --> 00:21:31.260
didn’t slow down his spending spree.

00:21:31.260 --> 00:21:37.419
ARYA: I would get a $20 meal at a Hibachi restaurant, and – but I left a $300 tip

00:21:37.419 --> 00:21:39.830
on a $28 meal.

00:21:39.830 --> 00:21:43.890
The manager came over and I had to sign papers though, to leave tips this big.

00:21:43.890 --> 00:21:47.710
So, I knew at the time, dude, I was like I’m gonna burn through this money fast.

00:21:47.710 --> 00:21:52.190
So, I reached back out to my friend who was a developer, like the web developer.

00:21:52.190 --> 00:21:55.710
I was like dude, it’s time to launch a new website.

00:21:55.710 --> 00:21:57.540
So, we did that.

00:21:57.540 --> 00:22:02.559
He made a new website and that launched in late 2013.

00:22:02.559 --> 00:22:09.260
That website blew up fast because everyone knew who Oracle was from Silk Road.

00:22:09.260 --> 00:22:14.299
Went to Reddit; I took it to Reddit, and this is when Reddit’s fake IDs subreddit existed

00:22:14.299 --> 00:22:16.100
before it got banned.

00:22:16.100 --> 00:22:22.549
I said hey everyone, it’s Oracle from Silk Road, veteran vendor from Silk Road.

00:22:22.549 --> 00:22:24.920
Here’s my Clearnet website.

00:22:24.920 --> 00:22:26.960
That one was called noveltyids.co.

00:22:26.960 --> 00:22:34.679
Noveltyids.co was the biggest website.

00:22:34.679 --> 00:22:38.760
I mean, the thing was, we were running the fake ID market.

00:22:38.760 --> 00:22:45.039
I remember the first day we launched, dude; I had like, ten orders the first fucking day.

00:22:45.039 --> 00:22:47.860
So, I’m still in high school, right?

00:22:47.860 --> 00:22:49.320
I’m in twelfth grade.

00:22:49.320 --> 00:22:53.520
Shit continues, going down the same path.

00:22:53.520 --> 00:22:59.780
I’m just spending all my time making fake IDs.

00:22:59.780 --> 00:23:02.580
Eventually – that was probably late 2013.

00:23:02.580 --> 00:23:06.220
By March or April I remember I was going on vacation.

00:23:06.220 --> 00:23:11.450
I was going to the Virgin Islands and I had gotten doxxed.

00:23:11.450 --> 00:23:14.340
Somebody doxxed Oracle and they tied it to me.

00:23:14.340 --> 00:23:15.820
I was like oh, fuck.

00:23:15.820 --> 00:23:17.200
This is not good.

00:23:17.200 --> 00:23:22.960
Obviously what I do is deny it and continue business because as long as I deny it, it’s

00:23:22.960 --> 00:23:25.220
– there’s no way to prove I am Oracle.

00:23:25.220 --> 00:23:27.060
I don’t know who did it, dude.

00:23:27.060 --> 00:23:30.530
To this day, I don’t know how the fuck my name got tied to Oracle, but it did.

00:23:30.530 --> 00:23:34.640
JACK: Even though his name was now tied to his fake ID business, he still decided to

00:23:34.640 --> 00:23:36.059
keep it up and running.

00:23:36.059 --> 00:23:40.220
I don’t think he understood the risk he was taking with that decision though, but

00:23:40.220 --> 00:23:45.440
this is the double-edged sword that all illegal online vendors face; the more they’re known,

00:23:45.440 --> 00:23:48.760
the more trusted they become and the more business they get.

00:23:48.760 --> 00:23:54.900
But at the same time, it means the more attention is on them from the police or other online

00:23:54.900 --> 00:23:56.190
enemies.

00:23:56.190 --> 00:24:01.919
Now that he was back to selling IDs on his own website, he lowered the price from $150

00:24:01.919 --> 00:24:05.110
down to $100 per fake ID.

00:24:05.110 --> 00:24:09.490
His website was picking up business and once again, every day after school, he was making

00:24:09.490 --> 00:24:11.130
fake IDs and sending them out.

00:24:11.130 --> 00:24:15.320
[MUSIC] He was doing this so much that he was starting to get tired from doing it all

00:24:15.320 --> 00:24:16.320
the time.

00:24:16.320 --> 00:24:20.720
He was buying the holograms from a vendor in China and over time, as he got to know

00:24:20.720 --> 00:24:27.410
this vendor, he discovered they were also making and selling fake IDs for US states

00:24:27.410 --> 00:24:29.980
and shipping them from China to the US.

00:24:29.980 --> 00:24:32.220
So, Arya gets an idea.

00:24:32.220 --> 00:24:36.730
ARYA: So, at this point, dude, it’s like – this is like, June of 2014.

00:24:36.730 --> 00:24:39.850
I ask him; I reach out to him, like dude, can you give me some of your employees?

00:24:39.850 --> 00:24:42.340
I’m like, I can’t do this every day.

00:24:42.340 --> 00:24:43.770
I’m getting tired at this point.

00:24:43.770 --> 00:24:46.429
I’ve been making fake IDs for almost two years.

00:24:46.429 --> 00:24:48.090
It’s getting out of hand.

00:24:48.090 --> 00:24:49.510
I don’t have any time to do anything.

00:24:49.510 --> 00:24:50.510
I have so many orders.

00:24:50.510 --> 00:24:56.350
So, this guy gives me a couple of his employees, and I give them access to the admin panel.

00:24:56.350 --> 00:25:00.860
JACK: He made a deal with this Chinese vendor that they would see the orders come in and

00:25:00.860 --> 00:25:05.440
make the fake IDs and then send them out to whoever bought them, and Arya would collect

00:25:05.440 --> 00:25:09.730
the money and then send them the cash to pay for their services for making these fake IDs.

00:25:09.730 --> 00:25:12.720
He sort of outsourced this whole business.

00:25:12.720 --> 00:25:18.710
ARYA: Now, at this point, I’m just collecting money and I’m not even making the IDs anymore.

00:25:18.710 --> 00:25:21.490
There’s people in China who are making them.

00:25:21.490 --> 00:25:25.350
They would download all the orders for that week, they would ship them out, they would

00:25:25.350 --> 00:25:29.360
send me my invoice, and I’d go to Western Union and I’d send them like, two, three,

00:25:29.360 --> 00:25:30.590
four, five, six grand a week.

00:25:30.590 --> 00:25:36.669
I’d also, at the same time, profit two, three, four, five, six grand for not doing

00:25:36.669 --> 00:25:39.940
shit, just pretty much facilitating these transactions.

00:25:39.940 --> 00:25:42.720
JACK: Things were going great for him.

00:25:42.720 --> 00:25:48.590
He had money to spend, a nice car, and a girlfriend that he was really in love with.

00:25:48.590 --> 00:25:51.710
But he wasn’t honest with her on where he was getting this money.

00:25:51.710 --> 00:25:54.750
ARYA: I had been lying to her, dude, the whole time throughout our relationship.

00:25:54.750 --> 00:25:59.610
She didn’t know where I was getting all this money from, but she was there for all

00:25:59.610 --> 00:26:00.610
of it.

00:26:00.610 --> 00:26:04.279
She saw the way we got to go out and eat, the way I was spending money, and I just told

00:26:04.279 --> 00:26:06.360
her; I’m like, I’m an investor in Bitcoin.

00:26:06.360 --> 00:26:07.360
I trade Bitcoin.

00:26:07.360 --> 00:26:08.520
This is what I do.

00:26:08.520 --> 00:26:15.190
Like, the most fucking cliche thing you could say when you’re doing illegal activity,

00:26:15.190 --> 00:26:16.190
pretty much.

00:26:16.190 --> 00:26:18.919
JACK: He even kept the printing equipment mostly hidden from her.

00:26:18.919 --> 00:26:23.690
ARYA: Well, she saw them but she didn’t know what they were ‘cause I never did anything

00:26:23.690 --> 00:26:26.560
in front of her, ever.

00:26:26.560 --> 00:26:32.500
When she went to sleep, I would get on my computer and make the templates and all this

00:26:32.500 --> 00:26:34.350
stuff, but she never saw anything.

00:26:34.350 --> 00:26:36.210
She saw it but she didn’t know what it was.

00:26:36.210 --> 00:26:37.210
You know?

00:26:37.210 --> 00:26:38.990
[MUSIC] We’re just naive, young teenagers.

00:26:38.990 --> 00:26:44.820
But I came out to her one day, the day before I graduated high school, and I told her this

00:26:44.820 --> 00:26:46.190
is what I had been doing the whole time.

00:26:46.190 --> 00:26:50.500
‘Cause I figured dude, if I’m gonna marry this girl, I have to tell her, ‘cause that’s

00:26:50.500 --> 00:26:52.480
what I wanted to do, was marry that girl.

00:26:52.480 --> 00:26:54.090
So, I told her.

00:26:54.090 --> 00:26:55.090
It crushed her.

00:26:55.090 --> 00:26:56.090
It broke her heart.

00:26:56.090 --> 00:27:00.419
We broke up, and I got really, really bad into Xanax.

00:27:00.419 --> 00:27:03.220
I mean, bad, dude.

00:27:03.220 --> 00:27:05.690
That destroy – it ruined my life.

00:27:05.690 --> 00:27:09.010
JACK: Arya had been taking Adderall all through high school.

00:27:09.010 --> 00:27:10.320
ARYA: It was under control.

00:27:10.320 --> 00:27:14.000
I’d take one a day, sometimes two.

00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:17.910
When this breakup happened, I started taking 300mg of Adderall daily.

00:27:17.910 --> 00:27:23.120
I mean, I was buying it online, I was buying multiple people’s entire scripts.

00:27:23.120 --> 00:27:27.070
Like, friends who were getting thirty Adderalls, I would pay them three hundred bucks for their

00:27:27.070 --> 00:27:28.070
scripts.

00:27:28.070 --> 00:27:29.940
I’m just eating Adderall.

00:27:29.940 --> 00:27:33.830
My friend had introduced me to Xanax because I had told him; I was like dude, I don’t

00:27:33.830 --> 00:27:35.330
know how to go to sleep at nighttime.

00:27:35.330 --> 00:27:36.330
I take so much.

00:27:36.330 --> 00:27:38.010
He’s like bro, have you tried Xanax?

00:27:38.010 --> 00:27:41.880
So, now I’m looking on the dark web to find Xanax.

00:27:41.880 --> 00:27:47.870
I find it, and now I’m taking literally 40mg of Xanax a day.

00:27:47.870 --> 00:27:54.690
I’d take a 30mg Adderall and then I’d counterbalance that with a 2mg Xanax, but

00:27:54.690 --> 00:27:59.860
the shit that I was getting online was pressed, and they were advertised as 4mg.

00:27:59.860 --> 00:28:03.080
So, it was just – it was disgusting, dude.

00:28:03.080 --> 00:28:07.730
JACK: Now, Xanax is most commonly used to treat anxiety.

00:28:07.730 --> 00:28:09.821
This is not always why people take it.

00:28:09.821 --> 00:28:12.529
ARYA: It is not, dude.

00:28:12.529 --> 00:28:15.030
So, humans, we need to have natural fear.

00:28:15.030 --> 00:28:16.030
We have to.

00:28:16.030 --> 00:28:19.010
It helps us dictate what we can and can’t do.

00:28:19.010 --> 00:28:24.100
If you take enough Xanax, man, that natural fear that keeps you safe from doing shit you

00:28:24.100 --> 00:28:27.910
shouldn’t be doing ‘cause you know it can either hurt you or put you in jail or

00:28:27.910 --> 00:28:31.710
you’ll end up somewhere bad, that voice of reasoning in your head is just gone.

00:28:31.710 --> 00:28:34.950
I mean, it is literally gone.

00:28:34.950 --> 00:28:37.309
Everything sounds like a good idea.

00:28:37.309 --> 00:28:40.070
You think you’re invincible on this shit, dude.

00:28:40.070 --> 00:28:44.090
So, here I am, just spiraling out of control.

00:28:44.090 --> 00:28:46.730
Now I’m ordering thousands of Xanax online.

00:28:46.730 --> 00:28:49.570
I had friends, man, but they weren’t making money like that.

00:28:49.570 --> 00:28:56.120
I figured if I can get a thousand Xanax online for $1,000, I can charge my friend $2,000,

00:28:56.120 --> 00:28:59.250
and then he can go around and turn that into $5,000, you know?

00:28:59.250 --> 00:29:04.289
JACK: Now, even though Silk Road was taken down, there were other darknet marketplaces

00:29:04.289 --> 00:29:05.289
up and running.

00:29:05.289 --> 00:29:10.690
So, he was now a customer on some of these other websites, buying drugs off these darknet

00:29:10.690 --> 00:29:11.690
marketplaces.

00:29:11.690 --> 00:29:14.200
ARYA: Any darknets that I can find a good price on, ‘cause they started popping up

00:29:14.200 --> 00:29:16.570
everywhere after Silk Road got taken down.

00:29:16.570 --> 00:29:18.960
Agora was one of them.

00:29:18.960 --> 00:29:22.230
So, I’m buying all my friends these Xanax.

00:29:22.230 --> 00:29:27.809
Now, dude, I’m just so lost in the sauce that I stopped giving a fuck about the fake

00:29:27.809 --> 00:29:28.809
ID business.

00:29:28.809 --> 00:29:30.900
I literally – I’m like, just receiving orders.

00:29:30.900 --> 00:29:32.020
I’m not fulfilling them.

00:29:32.020 --> 00:29:35.240
I’m not sending them to the manufacturers to make them.

00:29:35.240 --> 00:29:38.130
I’m just literally – just gone.

00:29:38.130 --> 00:29:41.380
JACK: He graduates high school and it’s now summer.

00:29:41.380 --> 00:29:46.970
He’s feeling crushed by this breakup still, and while the drugs help him feel better from

00:29:46.970 --> 00:29:53.179
it, he needed more drugs to keep feeling good all the time.

00:29:53.179 --> 00:29:57.980
He just didn’t feel like doing anything with the fake ID business anymore, but those

00:29:57.980 --> 00:29:59.169
orders kept coming in.

00:29:59.169 --> 00:30:04.170
ARYA: I’m behind probably like, $100,000 in orders and I just didn’t care, dude.

00:30:04.170 --> 00:30:05.289
I just did not care.

00:30:05.289 --> 00:30:11.070
My life just – I thought there was no point in anything after I broke up with my girlfriend.

00:30:11.070 --> 00:30:16.289
Late 2014, [MUSIC] this market called Nucleus popped up.

00:30:16.289 --> 00:30:22.789
I don’t know why, but I applied – I reached – this is when Nucleus first came out, and

00:30:22.789 --> 00:30:24.919
it ended up becoming the biggest darknet site at the time.

00:30:24.919 --> 00:30:30.960
But I reached out to them and I was like, if you guys need a staff member, let me know

00:30:30.960 --> 00:30:31.960
what’s up.

00:30:31.960 --> 00:30:33.630
I go by Oracle.

00:30:33.630 --> 00:30:37.380
I was a vendor for fake IDs on Silk Road.

00:30:37.380 --> 00:30:41.880
They reached back out to me and I became staff on their website.

00:30:41.880 --> 00:30:46.850
JACK: Whoa, Arya’s journey through the dark web is interesting.

00:30:46.850 --> 00:30:51.350
He started out as a vendor, then went to being a customer, now is part of the staff to help

00:30:51.350 --> 00:30:54.390
run the Nucleus darknet marketplace.

00:30:54.390 --> 00:30:59.389
Stay with us because after the break, he gets even deeper into it all.

00:30:59.389 --> 00:31:04.110
At this point, Arya had three streams of income; he was running a fake ID business, he was

00:31:04.110 --> 00:31:09.159
buying and selling Xanax, and now he was a moderator on the Nucleus darknet marketplace.

00:31:09.159 --> 00:31:12.060
ARYA: I did support tickets, I handled their forum.

00:31:12.060 --> 00:31:15.940
JACK: Now, Nucleus mostly had drugs for sale on their site.

00:31:15.940 --> 00:31:23.070
ARYA: I mean, heroine, cocaine, Xanax, weed, shrooms, research chemicals, everything.

00:31:23.070 --> 00:31:27.549
I think they were French, to be honest, dude, because their English was so bad.

00:31:27.549 --> 00:31:31.800
They needed me to – and I was really good with my English, really good with punctuation,

00:31:31.800 --> 00:31:34.139
grammar, I knew where everything was supposed to be.

00:31:34.139 --> 00:31:37.200
I had written up their entire website for them.

00:31:37.200 --> 00:31:42.640
I had rewrote it so it made sense to the public.

00:31:42.640 --> 00:31:49.549
Nucleus was paying – at the time it was a solid, flat rate of five Bitcoin a week.

00:31:49.549 --> 00:31:55.019
Regardless of what the price was, every Sunday we’d get paid, and it would be directly

00:31:55.019 --> 00:31:56.920
deposited into our Nucleus account.

00:31:56.920 --> 00:32:01.549
JACK: While he was doing this, he still was sort of doing the fake ID stuff, but he was

00:32:01.549 --> 00:32:02.600
very inconsistent.

00:32:02.600 --> 00:32:04.130
ARYA: It was bad.

00:32:04.130 --> 00:32:05.550
It was bad.

00:32:05.550 --> 00:32:09.620
I would randomly fulfill orders.

00:32:09.620 --> 00:32:12.440
Pretty much if you were lucky, you would get your ID, at this point.

00:32:12.440 --> 00:32:18.470
JACK: So, for the next five or six months, this is what he did; a little bit doing fake

00:32:18.470 --> 00:32:24.610
IDs still, a little bit buying and selling Xanax, and a little bit of this forum moderation.

00:32:24.610 --> 00:32:28.140
But his schedule was not consistent and was all over the place.

00:32:28.140 --> 00:32:31.230
ARYA: It just depended on where the drugs took me that day.

00:32:31.230 --> 00:32:35.350
[MUSIC] I’d wake up – after being awake for three days straight binging Adderall and

00:32:35.350 --> 00:32:42.669
Xanax, I’d wake up and I’d literally just do what the drugs told me to do.

00:32:42.669 --> 00:32:46.440
If they said moderate today, I’d moderate and I’d go ham on moderating.

00:32:46.440 --> 00:32:49.830
If they said go out and be a drug dealer, go out and be a drug dealer.

00:32:49.830 --> 00:32:54.340
If it said be a fucking fake ID kingpin, be a fake ID kingpin.

00:32:54.340 --> 00:32:55.919
I had no sense of direction, dude.

00:32:55.919 --> 00:32:58.660
I was literally lost in the sauce.

00:32:58.660 --> 00:33:01.470
The drugs dictated every move I made.

00:33:01.470 --> 00:33:05.529
Whatever feeling the Xanax gave me that day or the Adderall pushed me to do is what I

00:33:05.529 --> 00:33:06.529
did.

00:33:06.529 --> 00:33:11.110
JACK: Of course, with the Adderall and Xanax coursing through his system, he’s on a roller

00:33:11.110 --> 00:33:12.600
coaster of feelings and experiences.

00:33:12.600 --> 00:33:18.650
ARYA: In the moment, when the drugs first kick in, yeah, yeah, it felt great.

00:33:18.650 --> 00:33:26.019
It felt like I got my shit together, I’m doing it, I’m making so much money.

00:33:26.019 --> 00:33:30.539
But in reality, dude, from any businessman’s perspective, it’s like dude, you’re a

00:33:30.539 --> 00:33:31.559
fucking mess.

00:33:31.559 --> 00:33:36.070
You can’t even stay focused on one task.

00:33:36.070 --> 00:33:38.260
But in the moment it felt good, dude.

00:33:38.260 --> 00:33:44.909
It felt great until you sober up and then you look at – dude, who am I?

00:33:44.909 --> 00:33:47.399
Am I a Christian boy?

00:33:47.399 --> 00:33:49.650
Am I a drug dealer?

00:33:49.650 --> 00:33:52.440
Am I a fake ID kingpin?

00:33:52.440 --> 00:33:53.610
What the fuck am I?

00:33:53.610 --> 00:33:55.639
Am I a market moderator?

00:33:55.639 --> 00:33:57.510
Am I a staff?

00:33:57.510 --> 00:33:59.549
Dude, I had literally a personality crisis.

00:33:59.549 --> 00:34:02.720
I didn’t know who I was.

00:34:02.720 --> 00:34:07.880
JACK: Somewhere in the back of his head, he knew all this was illegal, which added stress

00:34:07.880 --> 00:34:08.920
to it all, too.

00:34:08.920 --> 00:34:14.200
ARYA: If you looked at me a year prior, I was this seventeen-year-old kid who was – only

00:34:14.200 --> 00:34:19.169
had a fake ID operation who was steady making money, who was taking drugs but had it under

00:34:19.169 --> 00:34:25.280
control, to somebody who was now involved in three or four different ventures, all of

00:34:25.280 --> 00:34:28.970
which can put you in prison for a very long time.

00:34:28.970 --> 00:34:33.629
But then you combine them all together; it’s like wow, dude, you could really go to prison

00:34:33.629 --> 00:34:36.639
for a long time.

00:34:36.639 --> 00:34:38.490
I had just become a whole different person, man.

00:34:38.490 --> 00:34:39.630
I didn’t even know who I was.

00:34:39.630 --> 00:34:41.129
I couldn’t even tell you.

00:34:41.129 --> 00:34:45.669
JACK: He tried going to college to actually study cyber-security, and some days he was

00:34:45.669 --> 00:34:47.690
really into it and did really well.

00:34:47.690 --> 00:34:52.300
But other days he wasn’t at all, and just didn’t go to class.

00:34:52.300 --> 00:34:55.780
So, he ended up dropping out of college.

00:34:55.780 --> 00:35:01.140
Back on Nucleus, the site was getting more popular, which meant Arya was getting busier.

00:35:01.140 --> 00:35:03.599
ARYA: The admin refused to hire more people.

00:35:03.599 --> 00:35:10.440
There was three of us and we had hundreds of thousands of users, and it was like dude,

00:35:10.440 --> 00:35:11.440
what the fuck, man?

00:35:11.440 --> 00:35:14.079
I can’t – this is not cool.

00:35:14.079 --> 00:35:18.250
We need to have more support because we’re getting fifty disputes a day.

00:35:18.250 --> 00:35:22.619
How the fuck do you think two people who have lives can manage to handle fifty disputes

00:35:22.619 --> 00:35:25.190
a day and hundreds of support tickets?

00:35:25.190 --> 00:35:29.050
JACK: So, he looked around the darknet to see what other marketplaces were there, and

00:35:29.050 --> 00:35:31.310
maybe he could work for a different one.

00:35:31.310 --> 00:35:36.570
He saw that AlphaBay was becoming one of the largest markets at the time, and this would

00:35:36.570 --> 00:35:38.320
be a step up for him.

00:35:38.320 --> 00:35:43.220
He reached out to one of the moderators of AlphaBay, and they started talking.

00:35:43.220 --> 00:35:45.960
He was asking if he could help do moderation.

00:35:45.960 --> 00:35:52.710
ARYA: I told him I was a staff member at Nucleus and he told me that he’ll talk to the team

00:35:52.710 --> 00:35:54.720
and see if he can get me hired there.

00:35:54.720 --> 00:35:56.210
Sure enough, that’s what happened.

00:35:56.210 --> 00:36:01.599
JACK: They gave him access, and he was now part of the staff on AlphaBay, helping them

00:36:01.599 --> 00:36:03.070
run the site.

00:36:03.070 --> 00:36:05.369
They were paying him in Bitcoin every week.

00:36:05.369 --> 00:36:11.070
ARYA: Yeah, $800 in Bitcoin, which would get directly added to my balance on my account.

00:36:11.070 --> 00:36:14.900
Every Sunday, I believe, or every – it was either every Friday or Sunday.

00:36:14.900 --> 00:36:17.460
But you’d log in and you’d have eight hundred bucks in there.

00:36:17.460 --> 00:36:19.900
That was the pay as a junior moderator.

00:36:19.900 --> 00:36:24.770
JACK: So, now he’s doing moderation for AlphaBay, just like he was doing for Nucleus.

00:36:24.770 --> 00:36:26.690
ARYA: Same exact thing as Nucleus.

00:36:26.690 --> 00:36:28.070
Like, literally the same thing.

00:36:28.070 --> 00:36:32.119
JACK: Often, he would handle disputes between customer and vendor.

00:36:32.119 --> 00:36:35.520
The customer would buy something and not get it, and then open a dispute.

00:36:35.520 --> 00:36:38.660
So, he’d have to ask the vendor hey, did you ship this yet?

00:36:38.660 --> 00:36:40.859
Can you show proof that you did?

00:36:40.859 --> 00:36:42.900
This is what he mainly focused on.

00:36:42.900 --> 00:36:48.220
Okay, so I saw a Reddit thread just yesterday, I think it was, which was like, ‘Strip club

00:36:48.220 --> 00:36:50.600
DJs, what have you seen that you’re not telling us?’

00:36:50.600 --> 00:36:57.730
So, now I want to ask you, darknet market moderator, what have you seen on there that

00:36:57.730 --> 00:36:59.210
would just blow our minds?

00:36:59.210 --> 00:37:02.829
ARYA: I mean, I’ll tell you the one thing that’s – the one thing that blew my mind

00:37:02.829 --> 00:37:06.810
was how much money the admin was making a day off commissions.

00:37:06.810 --> 00:37:12.250
I do remember asking another moderator, how much is the site generating a day in commission?

00:37:12.250 --> 00:37:14.610
Like, how much is the admin profiting?

00:37:14.610 --> 00:37:18.270
This man told me the admin was making $40,000 a day.

00:37:18.270 --> 00:37:20.599
Forty grand a day, dude.

00:37:20.599 --> 00:37:25.510
JACK: Now, if you listen to Episode 24 of this podcast, called Operation Bayonet, it

00:37:25.510 --> 00:37:30.990
is all about AlphaBay, and we learn that the admin was a guy named Alex and that later

00:37:30.990 --> 00:37:35.830
we learn that he made tens of millions of dollars from running this place, which was

00:37:35.830 --> 00:37:36.940
all from commissions.

00:37:36.940 --> 00:37:41.520
When somebody buys something on the site, a small percentage of that goes to the admin

00:37:41.520 --> 00:37:43.840
who ran the site.

00:37:43.840 --> 00:37:46.350
Did you get to speak with the admin ever?

00:37:46.350 --> 00:37:47.599
ARYA: All the time.

00:37:47.599 --> 00:37:49.260
I would talk to admin on Jabber.

00:37:49.260 --> 00:37:54.230
JACK: Jabber is a chat app which runs on the regular internet, which if you use the OTR

00:37:54.230 --> 00:37:57.530
plugin, it will encrypt your message end-to-end.

00:37:57.530 --> 00:38:01.770
Arya would really only talk with AlphaBay’s admin for business purposes, like to reset

00:38:01.770 --> 00:38:03.130
a user’s password.

00:38:03.130 --> 00:38:06.839
Now, his opsec was getting a little better by this point.

00:38:06.839 --> 00:38:10.890
He was learning how to encrypt his hard drives and use Tails, [MUSIC] and he went by a new

00:38:10.890 --> 00:38:16.380
username on AlphaBay; 6pathsage, which hadn’t ever been doxxed before, but there was still

00:38:16.380 --> 00:38:19.850
this trail of information with his fake ID business.

00:38:19.850 --> 00:38:23.640
That site was doxxed a while back, but he didn’t want to let that reputation go.

00:38:23.640 --> 00:38:25.110
So, this wasn’t good.

00:38:25.110 --> 00:38:31.760
ARYA: Not only that; I wasn’t tumbling my Bitcoin that I was getting paid for from AlphaBay.

00:38:31.760 --> 00:38:32.940
I wasn’t even trying to.

00:38:32.940 --> 00:38:36.329
I was doing the same thing I was doing with Silk Road, which was sending it to a Coinbase

00:38:36.329 --> 00:38:39.130
account and cashing out.

00:38:39.130 --> 00:38:43.850
JACK: The reason why this is an issue is because if the feds knew his Bitcoin address, they

00:38:43.850 --> 00:38:48.400
could issue a warrant and take it to Coinbase which is an American company, and ask for

00:38:48.400 --> 00:38:51.160
information about the owner of that wallet.

00:38:51.160 --> 00:38:56.150
Coinbase has all the real information for its users; IDs, bank accounts, addresses.

00:38:56.150 --> 00:38:59.839
But this, I imagine, is a problem for a lot of people.

00:38:59.839 --> 00:39:04.710
They want to hold their Bitcoin and be private about it, but in order to cash it out, you

00:39:04.710 --> 00:39:06.650
need an exchange.

00:39:06.650 --> 00:39:11.369
The trustworthy ones are audited and have to comply by US law.

00:39:11.369 --> 00:39:15.890
So, you either have to deal with a shady place that you can’t really trust to cash out

00:39:15.890 --> 00:39:21.839
your Bitcoin, or go to a reputable one who you can trust, but they also have to collect

00:39:21.839 --> 00:39:22.940
your personal information.

00:39:22.940 --> 00:39:25.829
So, you have to pick one to cash out your Bitcoin.

00:39:25.829 --> 00:39:28.910
Do you want privacy or one that’s trustworthy?

00:39:28.910 --> 00:39:30.260
You don’t get both.

00:39:30.260 --> 00:39:36.589
By this point, it was 2015 and the guy who was arrested for running Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht,

00:39:36.589 --> 00:39:39.900
had his trial and was given two life sentences in prison.

00:39:39.900 --> 00:39:41.480
Arya saw this news.

00:39:41.480 --> 00:39:45.460
ARYA: I knew that he had been sentenced and what he got, which was the two life sentences,

00:39:45.460 --> 00:39:47.980
but I just thought I was different.

00:39:47.980 --> 00:39:51.280
Again, full-blown drug addict doing all this.

00:39:51.280 --> 00:39:53.470
This is not of sober mind.

00:39:53.470 --> 00:39:59.970
This is just all in the mind of a pure drug addict who’s living his life in a haze.

00:39:59.970 --> 00:40:02.609
So, I just didn’t care, dude.

00:40:02.609 --> 00:40:06.910
I’m a martyr on AlphaBay, but I also have a separate account that I’m buying – I’m

00:40:06.910 --> 00:40:08.300
still buying thousands of Xanax.

00:40:08.300 --> 00:40:13.690
I found a vendor on AlphaBay that I ended up becoming his number-one customer.

00:40:13.690 --> 00:40:18.230
It was this vendor named PharmaKing, and he had the best Xanax.

00:40:18.230 --> 00:40:23.590
So, while I’m moderating, I’m still ordering Xanax.

00:40:23.590 --> 00:40:26.190
JACK: The Xanax really wasn’t making him that much money.

00:40:26.190 --> 00:40:30.220
He mostly got it so his friends could resell it so they could make money.

00:40:30.220 --> 00:40:34.589
They were selling it for much bigger profits, because he didn’t like being the only one

00:40:34.589 --> 00:40:38.579
with all this throwaway cash that he could buy things and have fun with.

00:40:38.579 --> 00:40:42.420
He thought it was much funner if his friends had money, too.

00:40:42.420 --> 00:40:45.089
His main income was still through these fake IDs, though.

00:40:45.089 --> 00:40:48.089
ARYA: At this point, dude, the fake ID business is a scam.

00:40:48.089 --> 00:40:50.550
It’s running as a scam would.

00:40:50.550 --> 00:40:55.510
I’m still getting all of these orders and I’m still collecting all of the money for

00:40:55.510 --> 00:40:57.800
it, but I’m not fulfilling the orders.

00:40:57.800 --> 00:41:01.670
So, in a sense, dude, I guess you could say I was just scamming people.

00:41:01.670 --> 00:41:03.460
I was just taking their money.

00:41:03.460 --> 00:41:06.960
I was spending it and I wasn’t doing my part of the bargain which was making their

00:41:06.960 --> 00:41:08.190
IDs and sending it to them.

00:41:08.190 --> 00:41:12.200
JACK: All he had to do was send the money and orders to those people in China who would

00:41:12.200 --> 00:41:13.750
make those IDs and ship them out.

00:41:13.750 --> 00:41:15.200
They would do all the hard work.

00:41:15.200 --> 00:41:16.790
But he wasn’t even doing that.

00:41:16.790 --> 00:41:17.790
ARYA: That’s it, dude.

00:41:17.790 --> 00:41:19.329
I know, I know.

00:41:19.329 --> 00:41:27.030
But I just became so greedy, man, and just did not care, just didn’t care.

00:41:27.030 --> 00:41:30.760
I was just an asshole, just a fucking pure piece of shit dickhead.

00:41:30.760 --> 00:41:33.670
[MUSIC] I didn’t care about anyone, just wanted all this money.

00:41:33.670 --> 00:41:35.990
Like, why should I pay them?

00:41:35.990 --> 00:41:37.550
I don’t know, dude.

00:41:37.550 --> 00:41:44.510
Eventually it got out to the world on Reddit that this website’s a scam, so the orders

00:41:44.510 --> 00:41:50.430
started going – they started going down in volume a lot over time.

00:41:50.430 --> 00:41:54.780
Then it went from making $5,000, $6,000 a week – went to making a couple hundred dollars

00:41:54.780 --> 00:41:55.780
a week.

00:41:55.780 --> 00:41:57.430
So, I was maintaining.

00:41:57.430 --> 00:42:02.590
I was still making good money for the age I was, being eighteen and not having any bills

00:42:02.590 --> 00:42:07.400
to pay ‘cause I live with my parents.

00:42:07.400 --> 00:42:10.700
I don’t have any bills to pay, so I was still making good money.

00:42:10.700 --> 00:42:16.210
I was comfortably living through all this, even making eight hundred bucks a week, even

00:42:16.210 --> 00:42:22.079
having a website that was barely running at this point, and between the money that I was

00:42:22.079 --> 00:42:23.390
making from the Xanax.

00:42:23.390 --> 00:42:28.560
JACK: Ever since he graduated from high school, his life was going downhill fast.

00:42:28.560 --> 00:42:31.260
The Xanax turned him into a different person.

00:42:31.260 --> 00:42:36.470
He was arrested a few times while driving under the influence of it, and lost his license

00:42:36.470 --> 00:42:37.470
from that.

00:42:37.470 --> 00:42:40.300
ARYA: I had totaled my car in late 2014.

00:42:40.300 --> 00:42:45.440
I had no car, so I had no – at this point, dude, I’m Ubering.

00:42:45.440 --> 00:42:46.440
I’m Ubering everywhere.

00:42:46.440 --> 00:42:51.700
I have no car ‘cause I totaled my car in late 2014 off Xanax, crashed it so many times,

00:42:51.700 --> 00:42:52.700
dude.

00:42:52.700 --> 00:42:56.589
I lost my license because of drug charges I got, so I figured what’s the point in

00:42:56.589 --> 00:42:58.420
buying a car if I don’t even have a license?

00:42:58.420 --> 00:43:02.450
JACK: Arya was starting to form a relationship with the police.

00:43:02.450 --> 00:43:05.080
He was not obeying traffic laws very well.

00:43:05.080 --> 00:43:08.079
He was driving while intoxicated sometimes.

00:43:08.079 --> 00:43:13.470
He was getting pulled over fairly frequently, but the police never found any evidence of

00:43:13.470 --> 00:43:14.859
it being more than that.

00:43:14.859 --> 00:43:19.150
They didn’t discover that he was buying thousands of Xanax at a time or was moderating

00:43:19.150 --> 00:43:23.319
a major darknet marketplace or was selling highly-illegal fake IDs.

00:43:23.319 --> 00:43:29.140
So, each time he was just hit with a minor penalty compared to what he potentially could

00:43:29.140 --> 00:43:30.970
have got if they only knew.

00:43:30.970 --> 00:43:34.200
Now, a very strange turn of events happened here.

00:43:34.200 --> 00:43:36.990
Arya had his fake IDs website, right?

00:43:36.990 --> 00:43:41.490
But he needed help with some technical aspect of it that he just didn’t know how to do.

00:43:41.490 --> 00:43:47.569
He knew another guy who was running another fake ID website, and they chatted sometimes.

00:43:47.569 --> 00:43:51.040
Arya reached out and asked him for help on the website.

00:43:51.040 --> 00:43:56.980
So, the two set up TeamViewer, a way for this other guy to see Arya’s computer.

00:43:56.980 --> 00:44:01.569
They started a screen-sharing session, and Arya connected to the web server and got access

00:44:01.569 --> 00:44:07.080
to everything so he could give this guy access to what needed to be done through his computer.

00:44:07.080 --> 00:44:10.740
The webmaster for this fake ID was like yeah, I think I can help with this.

00:44:10.740 --> 00:44:11.970
Let me control your computer.

00:44:11.970 --> 00:44:18.980
So, Arya gave him control through the TeamViewer and was watching him make the changes.

00:44:18.980 --> 00:44:24.080
ARYA: [MUSIC] I guess I fell asleep, right?

00:44:24.080 --> 00:44:28.329
I was high off Xanax and I fell asleep on my keyboard, ‘cause that happened all the

00:44:28.329 --> 00:44:29.329
time.

00:44:29.329 --> 00:44:32.190
I would literally pass out ‘cause I’d be up for three days straight, and I’d just

00:44:32.190 --> 00:44:34.109
crash one day and I’d wake up on the floor.

00:44:34.109 --> 00:44:38.340
So, while he’s on my TeamViewer one day and my TrueCrypt partitions are open ‘cause

00:44:38.340 --> 00:44:44.099
I had decrypted them, all of my text files that had my web server information and hosting

00:44:44.099 --> 00:44:49.260
information and all that good stuff, it – I guess he went through my computer, right?

00:44:49.260 --> 00:44:51.950
Now he has – and he keeps it on the downlow.

00:44:51.950 --> 00:44:56.260
I don’t even know I’ve been compromised, but he goes through all of my TrueCrypt volumes

00:44:56.260 --> 00:45:03.619
and he saves all of my fucking information; my wall – my Bitcoin wallets, my seed phrases,

00:45:03.619 --> 00:45:08.740
web server info, domain hosting info.

00:45:08.740 --> 00:45:15.119
JACK: Arya woke up and the TeamViewer session had ended, and he had no idea this guy copied

00:45:15.119 --> 00:45:19.870
everything off his computer, which was his competitor for fake IDs.

00:45:19.870 --> 00:45:25.061
But the guy did actually help Arya and made the changes he was supposed to do; just did

00:45:25.061 --> 00:45:28.809
a couple other things while Arya wasn’t looking.

00:45:28.809 --> 00:45:31.880
By this point, Arya’s income had started to slow down.

00:45:31.880 --> 00:45:36.190
The fake ID stuff just wasn’t bringing in what it used to, but that didn’t slow down

00:45:36.190 --> 00:45:37.680
his spending or lifestyle.

00:45:37.680 --> 00:45:43.170
[MUSIC] He would often hit up the mall and go nuts, buying Gucci belts and jackets, Louis

00:45:43.170 --> 00:45:49.140
Vuitton clothes, a mini-fridge for his bedroom, computers, TVs, watches, all this kind of

00:45:49.140 --> 00:45:50.140
stuff.

00:45:50.140 --> 00:45:52.650
As fast as he got the money, he was spending it.

00:45:52.650 --> 00:45:57.430
Occasionally he’d get together with some friends and drive over to Ocean City, Maryland,

00:45:57.430 --> 00:46:00.170
about three hours away, which is a beach town.

00:46:00.170 --> 00:46:02.000
It has a boardwalk and amusement rides.

00:46:02.000 --> 00:46:05.360
It’s actually a great place for teenagers to hang out, and Arya was eighteen at this

00:46:05.360 --> 00:46:07.380
point, so he had a fun time there.

00:46:07.380 --> 00:46:12.260
Of course, when he would go down to Ocean City though, he liked to party down there.

00:46:12.260 --> 00:46:16.020
On one trip, he goes down with two young ladies and a friend.

00:46:16.020 --> 00:46:20.561
They park their car, but for some reason they attract the attention of the police, who start

00:46:20.561 --> 00:46:22.720
looking in the windows of their car.

00:46:22.720 --> 00:46:27.460
ARYA: So, I guess they saw a piece of weed through the window, like on the floor, like

00:46:27.460 --> 00:46:30.369
a small piece of weed.

00:46:30.369 --> 00:46:31.780
Guess who goes to jail that night?

00:46:31.780 --> 00:46:32.920
Me and the owner of the car.

00:46:32.920 --> 00:46:36.950
I went to jail because I was driving the car when we decided to leave.

00:46:36.950 --> 00:46:40.300
The girl went to jail that night because she owned the car.

00:46:40.300 --> 00:46:44.760
They also found Adderall, like a bottle of Adderall on me when – I scratched the label

00:46:44.760 --> 00:46:47.990
off so they didn’t know who it belonged to, but I got charged with a possession of

00:46:47.990 --> 00:46:51.330
a Schedule 1, Schedule 2 narcotic and possession of marijuana that night.

00:46:51.330 --> 00:46:56.400
JACK: He’s only held in jail for eight hours and they let him out the next day, because

00:46:56.400 --> 00:47:00.260
again, the police found no reason to believe that he was affiliated with all these other

00:47:00.260 --> 00:47:01.920
ventures that he was cooking up.

00:47:01.920 --> 00:47:06.780
So, he gets out of jail in the morning, and a few more of his friends drive out and join

00:47:06.780 --> 00:47:08.530
him in Ocean City.

00:47:08.530 --> 00:47:14.510
One of his friends brought him a package, [MUSIC] something that he ordered from a darknet

00:47:14.510 --> 00:47:17.070
market, and it was delivered to Arya’s PO box.

00:47:17.070 --> 00:47:20.480
ARYA: I bought fake money in early 2015.

00:47:20.480 --> 00:47:23.440
I had bought fake money online on Evolution market.

00:47:23.440 --> 00:47:28.059
I was high in Ocean City one day, and these bills were not good.

00:47:28.059 --> 00:47:30.309
They were just – I – and I did it for the fuck of it.

00:47:30.309 --> 00:47:31.309
I didn’t need to do it.

00:47:31.309 --> 00:47:35.930
I just thought okay, cool, I can get $1,000 of fake twenties for two hundred bucks.

00:47:35.930 --> 00:47:37.560
Why not?

00:47:37.560 --> 00:47:41.010
I thought it’d be a good idea to go to Ocean City and ball it out.

00:47:41.010 --> 00:47:44.440
I got caught the first place I decided to spend it, which was a restaurant.

00:47:44.440 --> 00:47:45.440
Got caught.

00:47:45.440 --> 00:47:49.470
JACK: Yep, arrested two days in a row.

00:47:49.470 --> 00:47:53.770
This is the problem that I first ran into when researching Arya’s story.

00:47:53.770 --> 00:48:00.510
As I dug into his criminal record, there were pages and pages of criminal charges and violations.

00:48:00.510 --> 00:48:04.450
You already heard that he was driving while intoxicated, and reckless driving, and possession

00:48:04.450 --> 00:48:07.530
of marijuana, and now using counterfeit money.

00:48:07.530 --> 00:48:09.330
But this is just the beginning.

00:48:09.330 --> 00:48:15.849
Throughout 2015 and 2016, he was arrested or ticketed for so many more offenses; failing

00:48:15.849 --> 00:48:20.640
to stop at a red light, driving without a license, operating an unlicensed motor vehicle,

00:48:20.640 --> 00:48:24.990
purchasing and possessing alcohol while underage, trying to buy things with a stolen credit

00:48:24.990 --> 00:48:25.990
card.

00:48:25.990 --> 00:48:28.609
In fact, I see ten violations of him using stolen credit cards.

00:48:28.609 --> 00:48:33.660
Then there’s trespassing, public swearing, public intoxication, possession of fictitious

00:48:33.660 --> 00:48:37.780
ID, driving a car with the windows tinted too much, and speeding.

00:48:37.780 --> 00:48:42.320
Actually, there are three speeding tickets, and on top of that, there are many more penalties

00:48:42.320 --> 00:48:46.789
of him just not showing up to court or paying these penalties when he was supposed to, and

00:48:46.789 --> 00:48:47.960
stuff like that.

00:48:47.960 --> 00:48:50.099
Arya just didn’t care at all.

00:48:50.099 --> 00:48:51.900
He was on some kind of rampage.

00:48:51.900 --> 00:48:55.260
All he wanted to do was have fun.

00:48:55.260 --> 00:49:02.490
But on this trip to Ocean City, the fun stopped because he was arrested two times in two days.

00:49:02.490 --> 00:49:06.910
So, the police searched him and put him back in the back of a police truck, and took him

00:49:06.910 --> 00:49:07.910
to jail.

00:49:07.910 --> 00:49:11.440
ARYA: When they searched me, they didn’t see the twelve Xanax in my pocket.

00:49:11.440 --> 00:49:17.080
JACK: So, he’s in the back of the police truck with twelve Xanax bars in sort of a

00:49:17.080 --> 00:49:18.490
secret pocket in his pants.

00:49:18.490 --> 00:49:22.599
ARYA: My hands are cuffed behind my back, but there is some leeway to where I can reach

00:49:22.599 --> 00:49:24.440
my pocket if I just move my arms.

00:49:24.440 --> 00:49:27.920
So, I’m thinking oh my god, dude, I’m about to go to jail and they’re gonna search

00:49:27.920 --> 00:49:28.920
me again.

00:49:28.920 --> 00:49:29.980
They’re gonna strip me.

00:49:29.980 --> 00:49:34.630
[MUSIC] I’m gonna – they’re gonna find the Xanax and I’m gonna get in more trouble.

00:49:34.630 --> 00:49:36.799
I’m like, so what do I do?

00:49:36.799 --> 00:49:41.579
My friend that was actually at the restaurant with me, he got arrested, too.

00:49:41.579 --> 00:49:43.059
He had nothing to do with the fake money, though.

00:49:43.059 --> 00:49:45.960
He had absolutely zero to do with it.

00:49:45.960 --> 00:49:48.099
But because he was with me, he got arrested.

00:49:48.099 --> 00:49:50.380
I’m like dude, what do I do?

00:49:50.380 --> 00:49:52.299
He’s like bro, you gotta do what you gotta do.

00:49:52.299 --> 00:49:57.000
So I put – I go in my pocket, I grab the bag of Xanax, and I put it in-between my ass

00:49:57.000 --> 00:49:58.099
cheeks, right?

00:49:58.099 --> 00:50:04.460
So, we go into the jail and I had been arrested the night prior in Ocean City for possession

00:50:04.460 --> 00:50:05.460
of marijuana.

00:50:05.460 --> 00:50:07.380
I just got released that morning.

00:50:07.380 --> 00:50:08.380
I just got released.

00:50:08.380 --> 00:50:11.510
I was out for all of like, forty-five minutes until I got caught with the fake money, so

00:50:11.510 --> 00:50:14.240
now I’m getting processed back into the jail.

00:50:14.240 --> 00:50:17.940
I get there and the officer’s like, you were just released.

00:50:17.940 --> 00:50:20.220
How the fuck are you back here?

00:50:20.220 --> 00:50:22.359
So, I’m in the holding cell.

00:50:22.359 --> 00:50:27.079
I had the Xanax in the little baggy in-between my ass cheeks, and I’m in the holding cell

00:50:27.079 --> 00:50:28.550
popping bars, dude.

00:50:28.550 --> 00:50:29.960
I’m just eating them like candy.

00:50:29.960 --> 00:50:32.190
I’m like, I’m not getting caught with this shit.

00:50:32.190 --> 00:50:34.839
So, I pass out for – I don’t even know how long.

00:50:34.839 --> 00:50:36.740
They’re like, Secret Service wants to talk to you.

00:50:36.740 --> 00:50:39.240
So, Secret Service is like, where did you get the money from?

00:50:39.240 --> 00:50:45.290
I’m like, I met with some guy on LocalBitcoin who I sold Bitcoin to, and he gave me cash.

00:50:45.290 --> 00:50:47.119
They were like, where did you meet him?

00:50:47.119 --> 00:50:49.440
I was like, on the boardwalk.

00:50:49.440 --> 00:50:51.660
JACK: He lied to the Secret Service.

00:50:51.660 --> 00:50:55.270
He bought the money from a darknet marketplace; not LocalBitcoins.

00:50:55.270 --> 00:51:00.720
But he was so lost in the sauce, as he puts it, that he was just willing to do anything

00:51:00.720 --> 00:51:05.359
to get out of the situation and back to a lifestyle of having fun.

00:51:05.359 --> 00:51:11.750
This time, he would have to stay in jail much longer though, unless he paid his bond.

00:51:11.750 --> 00:51:15.260
ARYA: The magistrate or commissioner, he gave me a $20,000 bond.

00:51:15.260 --> 00:51:19.609
So, I’m calling my parents from the holding cell saying can you pay this 10% so I can

00:51:19.609 --> 00:51:20.940
get out of jail?

00:51:20.940 --> 00:51:23.410
So, my parents wouldn’t pay it.

00:51:23.410 --> 00:51:29.060
They just didn’t, so my friends ended up paying my bond and I ended up obviously paying

00:51:29.060 --> 00:51:30.300
them back.

00:51:30.300 --> 00:51:33.560
But my friends paid my bond, they co-signed, and I was out.

00:51:33.560 --> 00:51:39.220
JACK: Now, perhaps incidents like this should scare a person straight, right?

00:51:39.220 --> 00:51:43.510
Seeing what it’s like inside a jail should make you realize that that’s where you’re

00:51:43.510 --> 00:51:47.339
headed unless you turn things around, and fast.

00:51:47.339 --> 00:51:50.069
But Arya was hardly fazed by this.

00:51:50.069 --> 00:51:55.559
ARYA: At this point, dude, the most I had spent in jail was like – I accumulated maybe

00:51:55.559 --> 00:51:56.770
twenty hours in jail.

00:51:56.770 --> 00:52:02.589
To someone who’s in the prime of their drug addiction, nothing is gonna stop me from using

00:52:02.589 --> 00:52:04.220
my drugs, like nothing.

00:52:04.220 --> 00:52:06.210
It just wasn’t enough, dude.

00:52:06.210 --> 00:52:10.700
JACK: So, he continues to party it up and live the lifestyle that he’s been living.

00:52:10.700 --> 00:52:15.089
But eventually his court case comes up in Ocean City, and he has to go down and see

00:52:15.089 --> 00:52:17.609
the judge to see what’s gonna happen to him.

00:52:17.609 --> 00:52:24.349
ARYA: I got convicted of fifty counts of – or forty-eight counts, I guess, of possession

00:52:24.349 --> 00:52:28.670
of fake US – or fake US currency or some – I think that’s what the charge is called.

00:52:28.670 --> 00:52:32.600
JACK: He had to serve some jail time, but for some reason, they don’t make him do

00:52:32.600 --> 00:52:33.600
it all at once.

00:52:33.600 --> 00:52:38.030
The first round was that he had to go in for sixty days, and then the second round I think

00:52:38.030 --> 00:52:39.400
was gonna be nine months.

00:52:39.400 --> 00:52:43.299
So, he goes to jail for two months.

00:52:43.299 --> 00:52:48.450
While he was in jail, the guy from that competitor fake ID website, the one that helped Arya

00:52:48.450 --> 00:52:53.500
with the web server problem and then copied all his information when he fell asleep, that

00:52:53.500 --> 00:52:56.690
guy decided this was the perfect time to make a move.

00:52:56.690 --> 00:53:04.450
ARYA: But he saw it as the perfect opportunity to – why would I let his website go to waste

00:53:04.450 --> 00:53:07.059
and – when I could be collecting this traffic for my website?

00:53:07.059 --> 00:53:15.809
So, yeah, he ends up redirecting my domain, my name servers, to his website.

00:53:15.809 --> 00:53:18.800
That’s – yeah, that’s while I was in jail.

00:53:18.800 --> 00:53:22.930
JACK: After being in the clink for a couple months, he gets out and goes back home.

00:53:22.930 --> 00:53:25.510
ARYA: I’m still a moderator.

00:53:25.510 --> 00:53:26.580
I don’t know how.

00:53:26.580 --> 00:53:31.250
I haven’t done any activity in two months, but I get back and it’s like nothing had

00:53:31.250 --> 00:53:32.250
happened.

00:53:32.250 --> 00:53:33.500
They didn’t even notice I was gone.

00:53:33.500 --> 00:53:38.250
I got right back into it, right back into the drugs, right back into everything.

00:53:38.250 --> 00:53:40.540
JACK: But it wasn’t the same.

00:53:40.540 --> 00:53:44.840
He still had all the things he bought before; the designer clothes, the watches and stuff,

00:53:44.840 --> 00:53:47.920
but his income had gone way down.

00:53:47.920 --> 00:53:52.470
He was on the other side of this high and mighty wave that he was riding.

00:53:52.470 --> 00:53:57.380
ARYA: [MUSIC] You look at someone who had everything, dude, who literally had the world

00:53:57.380 --> 00:54:06.420
in his fucking palms, and by January 2016 was a full-blown drug addict who was just

00:54:06.420 --> 00:54:09.809
barely getting by.

00:54:09.809 --> 00:54:15.440
January 14th, 2016, I’m in the car with some friends.

00:54:15.440 --> 00:54:19.560
We got a sale for like, 130 Xanax.

00:54:19.560 --> 00:54:24.849
My friend drives me to go do this sale, and I sell it to these two people.

00:54:24.849 --> 00:54:30.780
I get back in my friend’s car and we’re driving, and we get pulled over for speeding.

00:54:30.780 --> 00:54:34.589
I’m in the back seat and there’s somebody in the passenger, and there’s somebody in

00:54:34.589 --> 00:54:35.830
the driver’s seat.

00:54:35.830 --> 00:54:39.290
As we were getting pulled over, I told everybody in the car – I was like, everybody throw

00:54:39.290 --> 00:54:40.700
everything you got in this backpack.

00:54:40.700 --> 00:54:45.700
I had my backpack on me which was all – I also had my laptop that I used for moderating

00:54:45.700 --> 00:54:47.480
and everything, but the laptop was encrypted.

00:54:47.480 --> 00:54:53.960
So, everyone throws their drugs into my backpack and I tell everybody before the officer even

00:54:53.960 --> 00:54:56.720
fully pulls us over; I’m like, nobody claim the backpack.

00:54:56.720 --> 00:55:01.030
We’re all gonna go down, and we’re gonna beat it, right?

00:55:01.030 --> 00:55:06.970
We get pulled over and the officer looks directly at me and he goes, you; get out of the car.

00:55:06.970 --> 00:55:08.809
So, I don’t know if I got set up or not.

00:55:08.809 --> 00:55:11.109
I think I got set up.

00:55:11.109 --> 00:55:12.569
The officer tells me to get out of the car.

00:55:12.569 --> 00:55:13.569
He smells weed.

00:55:13.569 --> 00:55:17.840
He searches the car, he searches the backpack, finds 200 Xanax in there.

00:55:17.840 --> 00:55:21.460
So, the officer sits me down in front of his car.

00:55:21.460 --> 00:55:22.460
I’m handcuffed.

00:55:22.460 --> 00:55:25.990
It’s cold; it’s like, 2:00 in the morning on January 14th, 2016.

00:55:25.990 --> 00:55:29.770
I’m sitting on the ground and I’m high as fuck.

00:55:29.770 --> 00:55:33.200
I just remember the officer coming back to me and he was like, the driver said it was

00:55:33.200 --> 00:55:34.770
your backpack.

00:55:34.770 --> 00:55:37.540
I’m like fuck, I’m going to jail.

00:55:37.540 --> 00:55:40.430
So, I go to jail that night.

00:55:40.430 --> 00:55:43.660
Dude, I go to sleep for four days.

00:55:43.660 --> 00:55:47.789
I had a lawyer on retainer ‘cause I just figured – dude, I knew this was all gonna

00:55:47.789 --> 00:55:52.859
come to an end, so I had slowly – every couple weeks, I would add money to my account

00:55:52.859 --> 00:55:55.380
with my lawyer in case something went down.

00:55:55.380 --> 00:55:59.500
So, eventually this goes down and my lawyer can’t get ahold of me ‘cause I’m passed

00:55:59.500 --> 00:56:00.530
out in the holding cell.

00:56:00.530 --> 00:56:01.650
They can’t wake me up.

00:56:01.650 --> 00:56:04.950
I’m just so – I’m just going through withdrawals.

00:56:04.950 --> 00:56:08.160
Eventually I come to and my lawyer finally gets ahold of me.

00:56:08.160 --> 00:56:12.940
He comes to visit me at the jail and he was like Arya, you fucking idiot.

00:56:12.940 --> 00:56:15.849
He’s like, this is gonna put you in prison.

00:56:15.849 --> 00:56:16.849
This is it.

00:56:16.849 --> 00:56:18.640
So, I’m sitting in jail.

00:56:18.640 --> 00:56:21.420
At this time, my only charge is distribution of Xanax.

00:56:21.420 --> 00:56:23.460
That’s the only one I got.

00:56:23.460 --> 00:56:28.589
I go to court and the prosecution would say the lab results aren’t back yet, so we can’t

00:56:28.589 --> 00:56:33.070
proceed with the case until the lab results come back and they verify that it is Xanax.

00:56:33.070 --> 00:56:36.110
So continuance, continuance, continuance.

00:56:36.110 --> 00:56:38.970
At this point, dude, it was July 31st, 2016.

00:56:38.970 --> 00:56:40.839
I’m in jail for seven months now.

00:56:40.839 --> 00:56:43.119
I’m still not – sense, I don’t know what’s going on.

00:56:43.119 --> 00:56:48.180
I wake up one morning; I think it was like, Wednesday, August 10, and they’re like,

00:56:48.180 --> 00:56:50.180
Ebrahami, intake is calling you.

00:56:50.180 --> 00:56:55.020
So, they send me the intake and there’s mass detectives sitting in the intake.

00:56:55.020 --> 00:56:59.230
JACK: The detectives weren’t saying much, except that they wanted Arya to come with

00:56:59.230 --> 00:57:01.350
them to go see the judge.

00:57:01.350 --> 00:57:05.050
At some point that morning, he’s able to make a call to his friends to see if they

00:57:05.050 --> 00:57:06.050
knew anything.

00:57:06.050 --> 00:57:10.309
ARYA: When I talked to my friends on the phone, they said a huge drug bust went down in our

00:57:10.309 --> 00:57:11.309
county.

00:57:11.309 --> 00:57:14.670
I’m thinking oh gosh, they finally got all of us.

00:57:14.670 --> 00:57:18.490
Like, we’re hit; they found out about the drug – the Xanax ring.

00:57:18.490 --> 00:57:22.660
JACK: The detectives take him to go see the judge or magistrate.

00:57:22.660 --> 00:57:27.640
ARYA: The detectives give the magistrate ten new felony charges.

00:57:27.640 --> 00:57:30.220
JACK: The house of cards was crumbling.

00:57:30.220 --> 00:57:32.579
The detectives were onto him.

00:57:32.579 --> 00:57:38.099
After seven months of just having one charge of possession of Xanax, he now had ten new

00:57:38.099 --> 00:57:39.270
felony charges.

00:57:39.270 --> 00:57:44.150
ARYA: Now I have six counts of conspiracy to distribute drugs.

00:57:44.150 --> 00:57:49.460
I got two counts of money laundering and two counts of manufacturing fake IDs.

00:57:49.460 --> 00:57:54.950
I’m now preparing myself mentally that I’m gonna be in prison for a long time.

00:57:54.950 --> 00:58:01.500
JACK: Arya took a closer look at these charges and realized how big of a situation this became,

00:58:01.500 --> 00:58:06.170
because he wasn’t the only person being charged with the distribution of Xanax.

00:58:06.170 --> 00:58:13.040
There were twenty-seven other people being charged, too, and Arya recognized all of them.

00:58:13.040 --> 00:58:17.990
ARYA: Remember, during all that time I was ordering thousands of Xanax during all this,

00:58:17.990 --> 00:58:22.619
so I didn’t realize that – how big – what I was doing.

00:58:22.619 --> 00:58:27.109
Like, 1,000 Xanax, that itself was a lot, but then you add up how many times I made

00:58:27.109 --> 00:58:32.010
a 1,000-Xanax order, and it was over twenty times, dude.

00:58:32.010 --> 00:58:37.600
So, every time – it’s not like people were going un-arrested throughout all this.

00:58:37.600 --> 00:58:40.470
People were getting arrested for possession of Xanax, distribution.

00:58:40.470 --> 00:58:44.619
There was a Xanax problem in my county and I didn’t realize that I was the one that

00:58:44.619 --> 00:58:45.619
started that.

00:58:45.619 --> 00:58:46.990
I had no idea.

00:58:46.990 --> 00:58:52.720
I didn’t realize – I just did not think about how far down the line my actions were

00:58:52.720 --> 00:58:55.630
affecting other people and other families.

00:58:55.630 --> 00:58:59.839
JACK: The people being charged were his friends who he would sell large quantities of Xanax

00:58:59.839 --> 00:59:04.020
to, and then they would turn around and sell them to other people for even more money.

00:59:04.020 --> 00:59:08.500
The county police called his Operation Breaking Bars, and they released a press statement

00:59:08.500 --> 00:59:12.250
showing the mugshots of all twenty-eight people that were arrested.

00:59:12.250 --> 00:59:16.890
All but two of them were between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, which if you

00:59:16.890 --> 00:59:20.410
have a bunch of nineteen and twenty-year-olds all arrested for the same thing and a lot

00:59:20.410 --> 00:59:24.809
of their mugshots look similar too, it kinda makes you wonder if they were all friends.

00:59:24.809 --> 00:59:26.950
ARYA: I know every single one of them.

00:59:26.950 --> 00:59:27.950
Every one of them, dude.

00:59:27.950 --> 00:59:32.920
In some way or another, I was either directly or indirectly involved, because I was giving

00:59:32.920 --> 00:59:37.010
– I would make these purchases for 1,000 Xanax and I would give them to my best friend

00:59:37.010 --> 00:59:40.980
who would then in turn go give them out to everybody else.

00:59:40.980 --> 00:59:43.619
So, the whole county had a Xanax problem.

00:59:43.619 --> 00:59:47.760
JACK: But there are two guys on here that sort of stand out, because one of them is

00:59:47.760 --> 00:59:50.299
fifty-five years old, and the other is fifty-nine.

00:59:50.299 --> 00:59:51.299
ARYA: Yeah.

00:59:51.299 --> 00:59:57.260
So, one of them was a doctor who, to this day, he actually lived in my neighborhood.

00:59:57.260 --> 00:59:59.380
I believe he was wrongfully charged.

00:59:59.380 --> 01:00:04.069
That doctor had nothing to do with any of this, any of it whatsoever.

01:00:04.069 --> 01:00:10.190
Then the other one, the other older gentleman was actually the father of the guy that told

01:00:10.190 --> 01:00:16.670
the police that it was my Xanax when we got pulled over.

01:00:16.670 --> 01:00:23.369
I assume he did the same thing when the police raided his house and they found all his Xanax.

01:00:23.369 --> 01:00:27.770
It wouldn’t surprise me if he told them that it was his dad’s Xanax, ‘cause that’s

01:00:27.770 --> 01:00:30.970
just the type of guy he is, and that’s why his dad got charged.

01:00:30.970 --> 01:00:34.720
JACK: After reading some articles on this doctor who was also arrested, it sounds like

01:00:34.720 --> 01:00:39.880
he was prescribing people Xanax and then those patients were selling those scripts or pills

01:00:39.880 --> 01:00:44.069
illegally, which Arya said earlier that he would sometimes buy prescriptions from people

01:00:44.069 --> 01:00:48.839
to get more drugs, so this doctor wasn’t directly involved with any of this.

01:00:48.839 --> 01:00:53.520
However, he may have been over-prescribing it to people who were selling it or abusing

01:00:53.520 --> 01:00:54.520
it.

01:00:54.520 --> 01:00:59.340
So, all these people are arrested and come to court, and almost all of them get out on

01:00:59.340 --> 01:01:00.340
bond.

01:01:00.340 --> 01:01:03.140
But Arya didn’t have the option to get out on bond.

01:01:03.140 --> 01:01:05.220
The magistrate wouldn’t allow it.

01:01:05.220 --> 01:01:10.280
So, Arya goes back to jail to wait until his court day.

01:01:10.280 --> 01:01:11.760
Eventually his court day comes.

01:01:11.760 --> 01:01:17.869
ARYA: Go to court that morning, dude, and my court date is at 9:00 AM.

01:01:17.869 --> 01:01:22.710
Everybody in this case, everybody you see in that report had court at the same time,

01:01:22.710 --> 01:01:25.250
in the same courtroom, on the same day.

01:01:25.250 --> 01:01:27.130
It was so awkward.

01:01:27.130 --> 01:01:30.500
Me and the other guys that didn’t make bond, we’re all in the holding cell together,

01:01:30.500 --> 01:01:32.680
and they would go out to court; they’d come back.

01:01:32.680 --> 01:01:34.040
I’d say what happened, what happened?

01:01:34.040 --> 01:01:36.890
They’d say, I got my case continued.

01:01:36.890 --> 01:01:38.640
I was like okay, it’s weird.

01:01:38.640 --> 01:01:43.289
[MUSIC] So, everyone gets a continuance and it’s like, it’s going on five or six hours

01:01:43.289 --> 01:01:45.360
now I’m waiting in the holding cell.

01:01:45.360 --> 01:01:48.240
My lawyer finally comes and he pulls me out the holding cell.

01:01:48.240 --> 01:01:49.900
He’s like, it’s not looking good.

01:01:49.900 --> 01:01:50.900
I’m like, what do you mean?

01:01:50.900 --> 01:01:57.529
He was like, twenty people just told the prosecution that you were the one ordering the Xanax online.

01:01:57.529 --> 01:02:02.510
He’s like, you have two options here.

01:02:02.510 --> 01:02:05.869
I was like – he’s like, that’s why everyone’s case got continued, because the prosecution

01:02:05.869 --> 01:02:09.580
wants to see whether you want to fight this and go to trial and they can use all these

01:02:09.580 --> 01:02:13.099
people, all these twenty people as witnesses at your trial, or if you want to just take

01:02:13.099 --> 01:02:15.650
the charge, like all your charges and just do your time.

01:02:15.650 --> 01:02:17.980
He’s like, what do you want to do?

01:02:17.980 --> 01:02:22.460
Now I’m thinking okay, I’m really considering trial, but the thing about trial in Virginia

01:02:22.460 --> 01:02:27.210
is if you go to a jury trial in Virginia and you get found guilty, dude, you are gonna

01:02:27.210 --> 01:02:30.890
do ten times the amount of time you’re gonna do when you take a plea deal.

01:02:30.890 --> 01:02:33.559
So I was like, what’s my plea deal looking like?

01:02:33.559 --> 01:02:34.910
He’s like, there is no plea deal.

01:02:34.910 --> 01:02:36.720
He’s like, you take all ten felonies.

01:02:36.720 --> 01:02:38.590
That’s the only deal they’re offering.

01:02:38.590 --> 01:02:40.920
You take every charge; nothing dropped.

01:02:40.920 --> 01:02:45.700
Now I’m like okay, I’m really considering trial and my lawyer is telling me dude, there’s

01:02:45.700 --> 01:02:46.700
twenty people.

01:02:46.700 --> 01:02:51.710
He’s like, if it was just one or two witnesses, I can probably persuade them, the jury at

01:02:51.710 --> 01:02:54.559
trial, like, they’re lying to save their own ass, but twenty people?

01:02:54.559 --> 01:02:56.730
He’s like, I can’t fight twenty people.

01:02:56.730 --> 01:02:59.330
I said, how much time am I looking at?

01:02:59.330 --> 01:03:03.640
He said, the low end of your guidelines is three years and the high end is five years.

01:03:03.640 --> 01:03:05.520
I was like man, I’m just gonna do my time.

01:03:05.520 --> 01:03:08.150
So, that’s what I did.

01:03:08.150 --> 01:03:10.329
JACK: So, he was sent to prison.

01:03:10.329 --> 01:03:14.490
They actually sentenced him to five years in prison, which for a twenty-year-old is

01:03:14.490 --> 01:03:16.609
some prime years of life to lose.

01:03:16.609 --> 01:03:19.440
But these were his consequences for what he did.

01:03:19.440 --> 01:03:21.260
Or was it?

01:03:21.260 --> 01:03:26.349
The charges he pled guilty to were for drug trafficking and manufacturing fake IDs.

01:03:26.349 --> 01:03:31.580
At no point were there any charges for him moderating a darknet marketplace.

01:03:31.580 --> 01:03:34.779
But a month later, his lawyer comes to him with more news.

01:03:34.779 --> 01:03:38.109
He says some federal investigators wanted to talk with him.

01:03:38.109 --> 01:03:43.410
Arya said he didn’t want to, but his lawyer said if you don’t talk with them, they’ll

01:03:43.410 --> 01:03:46.310
indict you on two new charges.

01:03:46.310 --> 01:03:48.319
Arya asked what were the charges?

01:03:48.319 --> 01:03:52.559
ARYA: One of them was aggravated identity theft for the fake IDs, and then the other

01:03:52.559 --> 01:03:57.589
one was mail fraud for shipping the fake IDs through the mail.

01:03:57.589 --> 01:04:00.640
So, he was like, do you want to talk to them?

01:04:00.640 --> 01:04:01.770
I said well, what do they want to know?

01:04:01.770 --> 01:04:04.140
He’s like, they want to know your story.

01:04:04.140 --> 01:04:05.210
I was like, what do you mean?

01:04:05.210 --> 01:04:10.420
He’s like, they want to know how you went from where you did to where you are now.

01:04:10.420 --> 01:04:11.569
I was like, okay.

01:04:11.569 --> 01:04:17.911
So, he ended up setting up a proffer agreement which is like a queen for – it’s pretty

01:04:17.911 --> 01:04:22.260
much an immunity agreement to where I can tell them every illegal thing I’ve ever

01:04:22.260 --> 01:04:24.560
done without prosecution.

01:04:24.560 --> 01:04:26.349
So, that’s what he did, man.

01:04:26.349 --> 01:04:27.539
That’s exactly what he did.

01:04:27.539 --> 01:04:32.410
So, the feds, on October 14th, 2016, they transferred me out of the jail.

01:04:32.410 --> 01:04:36.970
They took me with – in handcuffs, and I went and I sat down with the Department of

01:04:36.970 --> 01:04:40.000
Justice and I told them my entire story.

01:04:40.000 --> 01:04:44.170
They, at this point, dude – and I don’t know ‘til this day how they knew I was a

01:04:44.170 --> 01:04:48.420
moderator, but they presented – they told me; they said we know you’re a moderator

01:04:48.420 --> 01:04:51.210
on Nucleus and we know you’re a moderator on AlphaBay.

01:04:51.210 --> 01:04:52.599
I was able to tell them everything, dude.

01:04:52.599 --> 01:04:55.970
I was like yeah, this is exactly what I did.

01:04:55.970 --> 01:04:59.569
This is how I – pretty much the same story I just told you, I told them.

01:04:59.569 --> 01:05:04.670
That’s why I can talk about this, because of that proffer agreement, that I can’t

01:05:04.670 --> 01:05:06.119
be prosecuted for it.

01:05:06.119 --> 01:05:11.220
JACK: Under the proffer agreement terms, even though he admitted to other illegal activities,

01:05:11.220 --> 01:05:15.799
he was not charged with any of them, which means even though there was a federal investigation

01:05:15.799 --> 01:05:18.349
on him, he never faced any federal charges.

01:05:18.349 --> 01:05:22.130
The feds listened to the whole story, which gave them information so they can fight these

01:05:22.130 --> 01:05:25.390
crimes better, and perhaps arrest others involved.

01:05:25.390 --> 01:05:29.829
During the meeting with the feds, Arya learned something strange was going on.

01:05:29.829 --> 01:05:33.710
ARYA: [MUSIC] Somebody had been moderating my staff account on AlphaBay the entire time

01:05:33.710 --> 01:05:38.059
I was locked up, and they wanted my password.

01:05:38.059 --> 01:05:39.640
I gave them my password.

01:05:39.640 --> 01:05:43.400
They had a laptop with them and they tried logging into AlphaBay with my staff account

01:05:43.400 --> 01:05:46.470
and they couldn’t log in.

01:05:46.470 --> 01:05:50.221
I was like – and they told me that someone has been using it this whole time I was in

01:05:50.221 --> 01:05:53.220
jail, and it’s like I had never left.

01:05:53.220 --> 01:05:56.119
So, I was like you know, I did my part.

01:05:56.119 --> 01:05:58.690
I did the best I can.

01:05:58.690 --> 01:06:01.690
I’m sorry.

01:06:01.690 --> 01:06:02.690
And that was that.

01:06:02.690 --> 01:06:04.030
They left it alone.

01:06:04.030 --> 01:06:05.690
They knew that there was nothing else that I could do.

01:06:05.690 --> 01:06:10.500
I gave them everything I could give them, which wasn’t really anything.

01:06:10.500 --> 01:06:15.119
The primary thing that they wanted was my AlphaBay staff account login, and they couldn’t

01:06:15.119 --> 01:06:20.680
do anything with that ‘cause somebody else had ran the account, and I don’t know – honestly,

01:06:20.680 --> 01:06:21.770
I don’t know who.

01:06:21.770 --> 01:06:26.240
JACK: His hunch was it was that guy who was running the competitor fake ID website, the

01:06:26.240 --> 01:06:28.660
guy who copied all his files when he was sleeping.

01:06:28.660 --> 01:06:33.970
It was probably him who logged into AlphaBay as Arya and was doing stuff, because that

01:06:33.970 --> 01:06:38.750
guy had access to all of Arya’s login information, so that makes the most sense.

01:06:38.750 --> 01:06:44.089
But in the world of darknet markets, sometimes people take over usernames to hide themselves

01:06:44.089 --> 01:06:50.290
in the shadows of others, so it’s possible that the admin of AlphaBay saw that Arya wasn’t

01:06:50.290 --> 01:06:53.400
logging in as much anymore and just reset his password and gave that to someone else

01:06:53.400 --> 01:06:55.450
to take over the account.

01:06:55.450 --> 01:07:00.800
But whatever happened, Arya’s password wouldn’t work to let him log in anymore, which might

01:07:00.800 --> 01:07:05.990
have been some very helpful information for the feds to try to take down AlphaBay.

01:07:05.990 --> 01:07:10.880
The feds knew he had Bitcoin and kept asking him about it, but he spent everything that

01:07:10.880 --> 01:07:14.300
was on his phone and in his Coinbase account.

01:07:14.300 --> 01:07:19.329
The only thing left he had was eight Bitcoin on his laptop, and they brought this laptop

01:07:19.329 --> 01:07:22.790
to him, because when he was arrested, he had this laptop on him.

01:07:22.790 --> 01:07:28.559
But something happened to the laptop; it either overheated or broke when he was arrested.

01:07:28.559 --> 01:07:31.869
It wouldn’t boot or load the OS at all.

01:07:31.869 --> 01:07:36.839
That’s the only place he had his Bitcoin at the time, so neither him or the feds were

01:07:36.839 --> 01:07:39.309
able to get into this laptop at all.

01:07:39.309 --> 01:07:40.859
ARYA: Yeah, yeah.

01:07:40.859 --> 01:07:42.900
But they were pressing me out about the Bitcoin.

01:07:42.900 --> 01:07:44.440
They were like, what’d you do with all this money?

01:07:44.440 --> 01:07:46.940
I was like guys, I spent it.

01:07:46.940 --> 01:07:48.410
They were really drilling me about that.

01:07:48.410 --> 01:07:50.130
I was like, I spent every dollar of it.

01:07:50.130 --> 01:07:54.410
I was like, you guys know – dude, the file that they had on me, they had been watching

01:07:54.410 --> 01:07:55.710
me for four years.

01:07:55.710 --> 01:07:59.740
For four years they were watching me leading up to this.

01:07:59.740 --> 01:08:02.589
From the day I started doing this shit, they knew.

01:08:02.589 --> 01:08:03.589
They knew everything.

01:08:03.589 --> 01:08:05.410
At least that’s what my lawyer told me.

01:08:05.410 --> 01:08:10.490
But when I saw my file and how fat that thing was – I mean, they had logs of my Jabber

01:08:10.490 --> 01:08:16.380
conversations with the OTR plugin, which makes me now know Jabber is not secure.

01:08:16.380 --> 01:08:20.580
OTR is not secure, ‘cause they had my logs in clear text.

01:08:20.580 --> 01:08:22.710
Like, how the fuck did you get that?

01:08:22.710 --> 01:08:26.450
JACK: The federal authorities held up their end of the deal and didn’t give him any

01:08:26.450 --> 01:08:30.080
new charges, and he still had to serve five years in prison.

01:08:30.080 --> 01:08:33.810
So, prison was his life for a long time.

01:08:33.810 --> 01:08:38.870
While he was sitting slowly watching time go by, he was able to tune into the nightly

01:08:38.870 --> 01:08:44.219
news, and that’s when he saw that AlphaBay had been taken down by the feds.

01:08:44.219 --> 01:08:45.830
ARYA: I saw it on the news.

01:08:45.830 --> 01:08:51.109
It was eleven o’clock news; it said AlphaBay got taken down and that the admin had killed

01:08:51.109 --> 01:08:52.109
himself.

01:08:52.109 --> 01:08:54.069
Dude, it was weird.

01:08:54.069 --> 01:08:55.219
It was just weird to see that.

01:08:55.219 --> 01:08:58.409
It was like – again, I went into a twilight zone seeing that.

01:08:58.409 --> 01:09:00.880
But I’m like dude, this is somebody that I talked to.

01:09:00.880 --> 01:09:02.739
I had talked to this man all the time.

01:09:02.739 --> 01:09:04.009
JACK: Arya signed up for many different programs while in prison, like drug rehab programs

01:09:04.009 --> 01:09:05.140
and educational programs, and he was also getting more religious and was studying the

01:09:05.140 --> 01:09:06.140
Bible a lot more.

01:09:06.140 --> 01:09:07.930
He hoped that by showing the judge that he had good behavior and was completing these

01:09:07.930 --> 01:09:09.582
programs that he might not have to serve the whole five years.

01:09:09.582 --> 01:09:10.582
So, years go by of him doing these programs.

01:09:10.582 --> 01:09:11.582
ARYA: By June of 2018, I had written the judge three different times to reconsider my sentence.

01:09:11.582 --> 01:09:12.582
Every time I’d get a letter back; denied, denied, denied.

01:09:12.582 --> 01:09:13.582
JACK: His family started missing him and hired a new lawyer to try to help him.

01:09:13.582 --> 01:09:14.582
The lawyer was able to convince the judge to reconsider the sentence.

01:09:14.582 --> 01:09:15.582
The judge saw Arya had taken all these programs and was doing really good.

01:09:15.582 --> 01:09:16.582
ARYA: He said okay, you’ve been in jail for two and a half years now.

01:09:16.582 --> 01:09:19.130
Here’s what I’m going to do for you; I’m gonna suspend the remainder of your sentence

01:09:19.130 --> 01:09:24.370
on the condition that you complete this program, which is an intensive drug rehabilitation

01:09:24.370 --> 01:09:25.920
program, but this one isn’t in the county jail.

01:09:25.920 --> 01:09:27.109
It’s in a prison.

01:09:27.109 --> 01:09:30.960
He’s like, you finish this program, it’s a one-year program.

01:09:30.960 --> 01:09:32.739
Once you finish that, they’ll release you.

01:09:32.739 --> 01:09:35.650
I said okay, I’ll take – ‘cause I had – at this point, I had two years remaining

01:09:35.650 --> 01:09:36.650
on my sentence.

01:09:36.650 --> 01:09:38.719
I said I’ll take one year in exchange for not doing two years.

01:09:38.719 --> 01:09:40.179
I’ll take that all day, any day.

01:09:40.179 --> 01:09:41.859
JACK: But things didn’t go as planned.

01:09:41.859 --> 01:09:42.859
ARYA: I’m out of court.

01:09:42.859 --> 01:09:48.699
I come back and I start going to sleep, and the jail was like – the officer’s like,

01:09:48.699 --> 01:09:50.109
Ebrahami, intake needs you.

01:09:50.109 --> 01:09:51.540
Dude, I am pissed.

01:09:51.540 --> 01:09:54.290
I am so pissed ‘cause I’m thinking I’m getting more charges.

01:09:54.290 --> 01:09:56.510
Like, what the – I’m like, is this shit ever gonna end?

01:09:56.510 --> 01:09:58.030
How long am I gonna be locked up for?

01:09:58.030 --> 01:10:03.710
[MUSIC] Dude, I go to intake and the magistrate was like wow, it looks like your reconsideration

01:10:03.710 --> 01:10:04.710
hearing went well today.

01:10:04.710 --> 01:10:07.250
He’s like, looks like you got all your time taken back.

01:10:07.250 --> 01:10:08.840
You’re going home.

01:10:08.840 --> 01:10:13.310
I was like, excuse me?

01:10:13.310 --> 01:10:14.310
Excuse me?

01:10:14.310 --> 01:10:15.310
I’m going home?

01:10:15.310 --> 01:10:17.909
Dude, I got back to the holding cell and I called my lawyer.

01:10:17.909 --> 01:10:20.020
I was like, they’re releasing me.

01:10:20.020 --> 01:10:21.750
She was like, give me a call back in an hour.

01:10:21.750 --> 01:10:23.330
Let me figure out what’s going on.

01:10:23.330 --> 01:10:29.040
So, I called her back in an hour and she was like, the judge’s clerk messed up your paperwork.

01:10:29.040 --> 01:10:31.920
They put nothing in there about the program.

01:10:31.920 --> 01:10:36.090
So, as far as the jail knew, the paperwork that they got from the courthouse said that

01:10:36.090 --> 01:10:37.730
my time was over.

01:10:37.730 --> 01:10:41.110
I guess the clerk only heard the part where the judge said I’m gonna suspend the remainder

01:10:41.110 --> 01:10:45.920
of your sentence, but didn’t note anything after the fact that on the condition of you

01:10:45.920 --> 01:10:47.780
doing this one-year program in prison.

01:10:47.780 --> 01:10:51.160
So, dude, I’m calling my family.

01:10:51.160 --> 01:10:53.940
I’m like guys, do I tell them that they messed up?

01:10:53.940 --> 01:10:55.710
My parents are like, no.

01:10:55.710 --> 01:10:57.300
Just don’t – we want you home.

01:10:57.300 --> 01:10:58.300
We miss you.

01:10:58.300 --> 01:10:59.360
Don’t say anything.

01:10:59.360 --> 01:11:01.910
I’m calling my friends; I’m like guys, what do I do?

01:11:01.910 --> 01:11:03.460
Do I tell them that they messed up?

01:11:03.460 --> 01:11:05.310
No, don’t say anything.

01:11:05.310 --> 01:11:06.310
Just take it.

01:11:06.310 --> 01:11:09.050
So, I called my lawyer back and I was like blah, blah, blah.

01:11:09.050 --> 01:11:14.480
I was like, I can’t have this sort of opportunity present itself and say no to it.

01:11:14.480 --> 01:11:18.380
She was going over all the different scenarios of what could happen should they find out

01:11:18.380 --> 01:11:19.380
later on.

01:11:19.380 --> 01:11:20.380
I’m like, I don’t care.

01:11:20.380 --> 01:11:21.380
I’m risking it.

01:11:21.380 --> 01:11:26.370
JACK: So, he decides not to tell them that they messed up the paperwork and prepares

01:11:26.370 --> 01:11:28.490
to leave prison.

01:11:28.490 --> 01:11:30.940
But there’s another problem.

01:11:30.940 --> 01:11:34.210
Remember when he went to Ocean City, Maryland and got caught with counterfeit money?

01:11:34.210 --> 01:11:38.030
Well, he was supposed to go back there to report for his probation and to return to

01:11:38.030 --> 01:11:39.030
court.

01:11:39.030 --> 01:11:43.170
But because he was in prison in Virginia, he could not go to court in Maryland.

01:11:43.170 --> 01:11:47.670
So, as he’s getting released, they check if he has any outstanding warrants and sure

01:11:47.670 --> 01:11:50.000
enough, there’s one for him in Maryland.

01:11:50.000 --> 01:11:55.280
So, he’s released from prison, but the police from Maryland drive all the way out to him

01:11:55.280 --> 01:11:59.630
to pick him up to take him to the jail in Ocean City where he’s warranted.

01:11:59.630 --> 01:12:01.740
ARYA: I got sent to Maryland.

01:12:01.740 --> 01:12:05.690
I go in front of the judge and my lawyer was like Your Honor, he just did all this time

01:12:05.690 --> 01:12:06.690
in Virginia.

01:12:06.690 --> 01:12:09.060
That’s why he has a violation here.

01:12:09.060 --> 01:12:14.080
The judge gave me a bond for my probation violation and set me a court date for sentencing

01:12:14.080 --> 01:12:15.100
in July.

01:12:15.100 --> 01:12:17.720
So, I paid bond, right?

01:12:17.720 --> 01:12:20.199
It was ninety fucking dollars, dude.

01:12:20.199 --> 01:12:22.199
$90. I’m out.

01:12:22.199 --> 01:12:23.199
I’m released.

01:12:23.199 --> 01:12:28.070
I’m walking around in Maryland thinking to myself, how the fuck did I go from doing

01:12:28.070 --> 01:12:32.410
another year – like dude, I’m just – you know, think about it in that – in the mindset

01:12:32.410 --> 01:12:36.120
of someone who’s been locked up for two and a half years, man, had to do another year,

01:12:36.120 --> 01:12:39.080
to now, days later, being released.

01:12:39.080 --> 01:12:44.370
JACK: He took a three-hour taxi ride all the way back to Virginia, and goes home.

01:12:44.370 --> 01:12:45.480
But it was weird.

01:12:45.480 --> 01:12:50.480
ARYA: I had mentally prepared myself to do all this time and now I’m seeing my nephews;

01:12:50.480 --> 01:12:53.690
I see my sister, my mom, my dad.

01:12:53.690 --> 01:12:55.520
Man, it was just amazing.

01:12:55.520 --> 01:13:00.220
We went out to eat dinner at a Mexican restaurant that night and it was just unreal.

01:13:00.220 --> 01:13:06.050
JACK: His Ocean City court date was set about a month out, and in that time, Arya was good.

01:13:06.050 --> 01:13:09.090
He didn’t do anything illegal and stayed clear from drugs.

01:13:09.090 --> 01:13:11.210
He learned his lesson.

01:13:11.210 --> 01:13:15.980
On the day of his court case, his family drove him down to Ocean City to see the judge.

01:13:15.980 --> 01:13:20.130
His lawyer told the judge how he just served two and a half years in prison and that’s

01:13:20.130 --> 01:13:23.370
why he couldn’t show up to court, and that’s why he violated his probation.

01:13:23.370 --> 01:13:26.719
ARYA: When he gave me time to speak at my sentencing, he was like, do you have anything

01:13:26.719 --> 01:13:27.719
to say?

01:13:27.719 --> 01:13:29.139
I was like Your Honor, I just did two and a half years in Virginia.

01:13:29.139 --> 01:13:31.170
I was like, I learned – I was like, I’ve grown up.

01:13:31.170 --> 01:13:33.969
I was a little kid when I made all these mistakes and decisions.

01:13:33.969 --> 01:13:35.560
I’m like, I’m an adult now.

01:13:35.560 --> 01:13:36.800
I was like, I need one more chance.

01:13:36.800 --> 01:13:38.550
I promise you I won’t ruin it.

01:13:38.550 --> 01:13:41.570
[MUSIC] He’s like, I gave you another chance when I put you on probation.

01:13:41.570 --> 01:13:43.929
I’m gonna give you the remainder of your backup time.

01:13:43.929 --> 01:13:49.650
JACK: The judge said he still needed to serve nine months in jail from his original sentence

01:13:49.650 --> 01:13:53.510
and did not give any leeway or shorten the time at all.

01:13:53.510 --> 01:13:56.520
The bailiff escorted him directly to jail.

01:13:56.520 --> 01:13:58.280
ARYA: I’m sick.

01:13:58.280 --> 01:13:59.280
I am sick.

01:13:59.280 --> 01:14:02.989
I have been out for like, twenty-three days after doing two and a half years, and now

01:14:02.989 --> 01:14:05.060
I’m going back to jail for nine months.

01:14:05.060 --> 01:14:08.230
I looked back at my parents, man, and I can just see heartbreak.

01:14:08.230 --> 01:14:09.989
It was just terrible.

01:14:09.989 --> 01:14:12.290
I was sick to my stomach.

01:14:12.290 --> 01:14:14.520
So, I went back to jail in Maryland.

01:14:14.520 --> 01:14:17.290
JACK: So, back to jail he goes.

01:14:17.290 --> 01:14:21.010
Even though he was sentenced to nine months, he only had to serve six, so he does his six

01:14:21.010 --> 01:14:27.100
months in jail and gets back out, and goes back home to Virginia to his parents’ house.

01:14:27.100 --> 01:14:31.820
Now that he’s out of jail, he still has probation from his main drug trafficking case,

01:14:31.820 --> 01:14:35.450
so he has to report to his probation officer frequently, and she comes by and checks on

01:14:35.450 --> 01:14:38.620
him to make sure he’s not violating any of the terms.

01:14:38.620 --> 01:14:42.740
He continues to report to his probation officer during all this time, and actually gets a

01:14:42.740 --> 01:14:45.389
job as a server in a restaurant.

01:14:45.389 --> 01:14:51.159
But then one day, his probation officer was reviewing his files and saw the discrepancy

01:14:51.159 --> 01:14:52.690
in his paperwork.

01:14:52.690 --> 01:14:57.920
She notices he’s supposed to be in prison right now, doing that one-year-long drug program

01:14:57.920 --> 01:14:58.920
still.

01:14:58.920 --> 01:14:59.920
So, she calls him up.

01:14:59.920 --> 01:15:02.360
ARYA: She was like, how are you out right now?

01:15:02.360 --> 01:15:03.449
I was like oh, fuck.

01:15:03.449 --> 01:15:05.330
I was like, it’s all coming back.

01:15:05.330 --> 01:15:07.480
It’s like it’s catching up to me.

01:15:07.480 --> 01:15:09.600
She pretty much said you have to turn yourself in.

01:15:09.600 --> 01:15:12.090
In my head I’m like, I am not ever going back to jail.

01:15:12.090 --> 01:15:13.180
I am so over it.

01:15:13.180 --> 01:15:15.330
I’m done with jail.

01:15:15.330 --> 01:15:20.160
I hired a lawyer and – ‘cause she gave me two weeks to turn myself in to go finish

01:15:20.160 --> 01:15:21.160
my time.

01:15:21.160 --> 01:15:24.260
I still had to go to prison to do this year program, so I hired a lawyer.

01:15:24.260 --> 01:15:30.940
We go in front of the judge and the motion was a motion to reconsider my reconsidered

01:15:30.940 --> 01:15:31.940
sentence.

01:15:31.940 --> 01:15:35.690
We’re asking for a reconsideration on top of what the judge already reconsidered.

01:15:35.690 --> 01:15:39.650
Remember, I’m out for – I’ve been out for six months now.

01:15:39.650 --> 01:15:40.989
I’m doing good.

01:15:40.989 --> 01:15:42.080
I’m chilling, I’m working.

01:15:42.080 --> 01:15:44.250
I’m working at a restaurant; I’m a server.

01:15:44.250 --> 01:15:45.450
I’m not doing anything illegal.

01:15:45.450 --> 01:15:46.450
I’m just relaxing.

01:15:46.450 --> 01:15:49.030
I’m a normal person now.

01:15:49.030 --> 01:15:53.120
We go in front of the judge and the judge was like – he’s like, I remember you.

01:15:53.120 --> 01:15:55.290
He was like, you had the Bitcoin case.

01:15:55.290 --> 01:15:57.490
The judge was like, I don’t want to be the one to do this.

01:15:57.490 --> 01:16:00.620
He’s like, I don’t want to pull the rug from underneath your feet, but you owe the

01:16:00.620 --> 01:16:02.880
commonwealth a debt.

01:16:02.880 --> 01:16:04.250
You have a debt to pay.

01:16:04.250 --> 01:16:09.880
So, my lawyer suggested – there’s two modules to that prison, that one-year prison

01:16:09.880 --> 01:16:10.880
program.

01:16:10.880 --> 01:16:13.420
There’s a six-month version of it and there’s a one-year version of it.

01:16:13.420 --> 01:16:17.240
My lawyer had suggested to the judge hey, he’s been out for six months on good behavior.

01:16:17.240 --> 01:16:21.949
Take that into consideration when you sentence him next week, that he’s been out for this

01:16:21.949 --> 01:16:24.550
long, and just give him the six-month version of the program.

01:16:24.550 --> 01:16:31.100
So, I go back to court for sentencing – re-sentencing, I guess, and the judge gave me the six-month

01:16:31.100 --> 01:16:32.100
version.

01:16:32.100 --> 01:16:34.730
So, I went back to the county jail that day.

01:16:34.730 --> 01:16:36.830
That was June 6th, 2018.

01:16:36.830 --> 01:16:43.199
I went back to the county jail and I stayed there until about July – late July, and

01:16:43.199 --> 01:16:46.469
then the Department of Corrections came to pick me up.

01:16:46.469 --> 01:16:51.090
I went to prison and I finished my six months there, and I was done.

01:16:51.090 --> 01:16:57.870
I had been out since then, and I got out on my birthday last year, January 10th, 2020,

01:16:57.870 --> 01:17:00.870
and now it’s just a story to tell.

01:17:00.870 --> 01:17:05.449
JACK: So, Arya is now done with prison, done with drugs, done with the illegal life.

01:17:05.449 --> 01:17:07.860
He’s feeling great and optimistic about the future.

01:17:07.860 --> 01:17:11.610
He’s currently working in a smoke shop and trading crypto to get by.

01:17:11.610 --> 01:17:15.670
In fact, he’s really getting into crypto, so much that he launched his own cryptocoin,

01:17:15.670 --> 01:17:19.670
which you can find more about at lofi-defi.net.

01:17:19.670 --> 01:17:24.380
He seems to be investing in long shot opportunities where you can invest a little bit, but then

01:17:24.380 --> 01:17:27.010
it has the potential of making a lot of money.

01:17:27.010 --> 01:17:31.739
Because, of all the stuff he got into, the Bitcoin was really the stuff that he should

01:17:31.739 --> 01:17:34.620
have held onto but got away.

01:17:34.620 --> 01:17:40.429
He had Bitcoin on his laptop when he was arrested, but that laptop broke somehow, and the feds

01:17:40.429 --> 01:17:41.630
still have it.

01:17:41.630 --> 01:17:44.179
There’s no way for him to access it.

01:17:44.179 --> 01:17:50.770
But there are eight Bitcoins on that computer still, which at the time was only worth $1,000,

01:17:50.770 --> 01:17:53.400
but today is worth over $400,000.

01:17:53.400 --> 01:17:58.620
So, there’s not a moment that goes by that he doesn’t look back at this Bitcoin that

01:17:58.620 --> 01:18:00.770
he had and wishes he had kept it somehow.

01:18:00.770 --> 01:18:02.989
ARYA: Gosh, dude, I know.

01:18:02.989 --> 01:18:03.989
I bang my head against the wall.

01:18:03.989 --> 01:18:08.640
I wake up, dude; the first thing I do is I just run into my wall headfirst.

01:18:08.640 --> 01:18:10.429
Every day, it’s the first thing I do.

01:18:10.429 --> 01:18:15.170
JACK: Arya is chasing that wave of crypto, and that’s why he’s excited to invest

01:18:15.170 --> 01:18:19.409
in it today, and he’s only twenty-five years old still, and has a whole lifetime ahead

01:18:19.409 --> 01:18:20.409
of him.

01:18:20.409 --> 01:18:24.760
[MUSIC] But at the same time, he already has a lifetime of stories.

01:18:24.760 --> 01:18:29.270
ARYA: That’s what happened, dude.

01:18:29.270 --> 01:18:37.490
(OUTRO): A big thank you to Arya Ebrahami for sharing this story with us.

01:18:37.490 --> 01:18:42.190
Just as a reminder, you can get an ad-free version of this show and bonus episodes.

01:18:42.190 --> 01:18:47.630
You can do this by either subscribing to Darknet Diaries Plus on Apple Podcast, or by visiting

01:18:47.630 --> 01:18:50.530
patreon.com/darknetdiaries.

01:18:50.530 --> 01:18:53.659
If you do, it’ll really help the show, so thanks a lot.

01:18:53.659 --> 01:18:56.690
This show is made by me, dark venom, Jack Rhysider.

01:18:56.690 --> 01:19:00.860
Editing help and sound design by the tab-clicking Andrew Meriwether.

01:19:00.860 --> 01:19:05.010
Our associate producer just back from the poolside potluck is Ray [Redacted].

01:19:05.010 --> 01:19:10.480
You’re currently listening to Dreamer #12085 which is an NFT I just bought, and our theme

01:19:10.480 --> 01:19:13.010
music is by the fanciful Breakmaster Cylinder.

01:19:13.010 --> 01:19:17.000
Hey, I just found out that Albert Einstein was a real person.

01:19:17.000 --> 01:19:20.620
All this time I just thought he was a theoretical physicist.

01:19:20.620 --> 01:19:22.189
This is Darknet Diaries.