I’ll be heading off to prison next week, due to some Silk Road shenanigans from the past.
Like I’ve mentioned in previous articles, I used to sell drugs on the Silk Road. I was active on both SR and SR2 and when SR2 was shut down I created my own darknet webshop for my customer base, which by then had grown to a loyal base of several hundred people who appreciated my focus on quality and customer service.
Unfortunately, as I would later come to learn, the level of security on Silk Road was horrible.
Combine that with mistakes made on my end, and you end up in my situation. With my ass being handed to my local police authorities on a silver platter, courtesy of the FBI.
What really happened?
After seizing and analysing the contents of the Silk Road server — FBI shared its findings with Interpol, which then shared it with Europol, and Europol finally tipped off my local police authorities. And trust me, they jumped on it…😬
The tip stated a suspicion that I was responsible for running the highest rated, and highest volume Silk Road vendor in my country.
Unfortunately for me, the suspicion was mostly true.
How did I get caught?
Like you probably can imagine, a mere tip is not enough for the police to imprison anyone. But in my case it was more than enough to launch a substantial investigation, which was allowed to burn through a large amount of resources.
A few months after the tip was received my phone was tapped 24/7, I was under surveillance several days a week by undercover agents.
Furthermore the police drove around my neighbourhood with Stingray’s in hopes to discover more cell phones in use by me, as they suspected me of using phones that were not registered in my name.
Actually they were wrong on that suspicion (at the very least🙄), I only used one phone, but the lack of evidence gathered from them tapping my phones had them puzzled. They couldn’t figure out how I stayed in contact with my suppliers, and other helpers.
I actually thought that was really weird, this investigation was ongoing in 2016 and you’d think they had heard of Wickr, Telegram, Signal and the likes by then.
Simply put, the reason for them not hearing me speak about criminal actions on my regular phone line was because I had several encrypted apps on my phone that allowed for encrypted communications.
Some worked better than others, and some did not work at all, which I would later come to learn (the hard way).
In addition to regular undercover surveillance, phone taps, and the use of Stingray’s (which I believe were illegal for police to use at that time) — I was also subjected to the police entering my apartment, without my knowledge, for an unknown amount of times over the timespan of 2–3 months.
When inside my apartment, they installed even more surveillance equipment, some of which I’m 100% positive were illegal at the time, amongst others a physical keylogger installed to sniff out any passwords I used to log on to a stationary computer in the office part of my apartment.
That keylogger would later be responsible for me getting fucked.
Long story short, they got me good, and after sparing no resources on the investigation itself — they didn’t hold back when they authored the charges against me either.
What did I get convicted for?
The police were not modest when pressing their charges against me, they had been receiving some criticism from the press over the last couple of years for being unable to act on darknet drug vendors. So when they needed it the most, along came I as a perfect target for them to state an example.
Without going into specifics, I can share that I finally got convicted for trafficking about 50 kilograms of cannabis (both weed and hash) and around 1 kilogram of Cocaine (the regular kind, not crack).
For this I received a sentence of just over 6 years, and I will begin serving this sentence in a few days. Actually though, due to time served in custody (while the police were investigating the case further after my arrest) I will have closer to 4 years left to serve. So I won’t be gone for a total of 6 years from now…. but it’s going to be a while until I get back online.
So how did I get started selling drugs online anyways?
The short answer is that the discovery of Bitcoin and Silk Road (both of which I came to learn about through the now infamous Gizmodo article) had me curious.
After checking out Silk Road, and in time using it as a customer, I noticed a lack of local vendors for my countrymen — that, combined with the fact that I’ve always had a wide network of people who sell and consume large amounts off different controlled substances, got me thinking that maybe I could fill a void.
And so I did, for a long while, for close to 4 years, actually.
In the beginning I remember paying 5$ per BTC, which I would later spend on purchases on the Silk Road. I bought thousands of BTC at this time.
(The painful irony of knowing that if I’d only held on to those BTC from the beginning instead of using them for illicit purposes, would have made me a very wealthy (not to mention, free) man is just beginning to not hurt as much as it used to)
I would experience the thrill of getting a 100$ payment for a shipment of drugs, and seing BTC triple in value before I had time to cash out. The early days and months of my Silk Road presence was truly exhilarating. It almost seemed to good to be true, which it was..
At later points in time, I would experience the total despair of receiving 100$ worth of BTC, only to observe the value of the BTC plummet to 30–40$ before I had time to cash out the BTC. Those were hard times. Stressful as fuck and very bad for morale, overall.
So in these times, I had a tendency to consume even more drugs than usual (I already had a healthy apetite for cocaine, weed, alcohol and valium — that consumption skyrocketed in times of extra stress).
So, honestly, I’m glad I got caught, I’m glad this was stopped. Because I don’t see myself ending this whole ordeal on my own.
I actually needed the shock of 10 police officers kicking in my door in the middle of the night, dragging me out of my bed and into a cold concrete cell in order for me just to gain control of my substance abuse.
Not to mention breaking out of the tailspin in which my entire “business” was stuck in.
What’s next?
Well, prison, obviously.
However I have spent my time since the release from custody finding a renewed passion for Blockchain tech. I’ve been fortunate enough to get in touch with a lot of people from all over the world, with the same passion, just as a result of my (very few) articles published last year.
I’m going to keep improving my skills, and my goal is to obtain a masters degree in computer engineering before my release (which will be in about 4 years from now). It should be doable, I have a Bachelors degree from before and I just need to improve my math skills a bit before jumping on a masters study.
Also, I’ve been fortunate enough to get on board with the Bitcoin Air development team who have been more than supportive and generous with me. I’m looking forward to having some time off for self-improving like studying, excercising and meditating, only to rejoin the crypto space with force.
And it’s not that bad, sometime next spring I will be moved from a high-security facility to a lower security facility. That means that I will be allowed to get back online during the daytime as I go ahead with my personal studies, and even if my return back to ordinary life will be step by step, with a lot of frustrating hurdles in between. I’m more than prepared for it.
So that’s it, I thought I’d share a short and (bitter)sweet update to anyone curious enough to want to read through this thing, instead of suddenly disappearing without a word.
There are a bunch of people I’d like to extend my thanks to, who I’ve interacted with through this Mister Krüger persona. I’ve had long and meaningful conversations with a handful of people I’d never get in touch with were it not for me starting to write here on Medium, and post some random crap on Twitter from time to time.
But instead of listing them all, and risking forgetting someone — I’ll just settle with the fact that you know who you are, and to all of you THANK YOU for all the support, great conversations, trading tips, writing input, tech discussions and more.
Keep a look out for me returning online sometime in 15–16 months or so, until then:
