Feasibility of a transparent, illegal trade?

August 9, 2010 6:30 AM

Is it possible to set up a completely open, transparent system wherein a trusted seller could make illegal trades with a multitude of buyers, leaving the police completely aware but unable to do anything. (Completely hypothetical of course, but I am very interested)

Say somebody wanted to start a business selling illegal drugs. Naturally there will always be the inherent risk of a police sting if they have to meet clients to conduct the trades in person.

However, it strikes me that with a bit of money it would certainly be possible to send clients their drugs in the mail, in sealed, airtight, cleaned containers, and of course without a return address.

Word of mouth / success stories would naturally take care of advertising and trust issues.

This leaves the problem of how a client could contact a seller and send them money without having any details which could be traced back to the seller's identity. Is this possible?

It strikes me that the many companies which pride themselves on their independence from government use of their data, such as Google or the Swiss banks, might be of service here. Also, anonymous networks such as tor might prove useful.

Would it be illegal for 'employees' to carry out transactions with a box for which they have no way of knowing the contents? (if the contents were illegal to possess/sell).

Serious suggestions only please.

posted by insperatum to Work & Money (14 answers total)

I think in any situation where you are relying on the non-cooperation of the transmitting entities (in your situation, the postal service) will break down, at least in the case where the police have infinite resources/motivation.

For example, your postal scenario. Let's assume that a person can pay anonymously.
Here's how the cops break it:
1) Buy drugs.
2) With a warrant, get the post office to notify you of the route that the drugs take. This will get you to (let's say) the post office that it first came in)
3) Stake-out all mailboxes that feed into the post office.
4) Buy drugs.

For this scenario to work, you need the transmitting entities to not cooperate due to lack of ability, as in they're only passing encrypted info or some similar scenario. Which will preclude any form of physical trade.

There may be a way - if the boxes sent contain a small cryptographically secure sub-box, and the key to open the box is generated only for the payer, and a great number of boxes are mailed in the same way which don't contain illegal whatevers, but I think even then the cops could arrest you, it would just take more effort on their part.
posted by Lemurrhea at 6:46 AM on August 9, 2010

You don't say what country the sender and recipients are in, but mail is subject to X-ray screening and/or spot checks by sniffer dogs looking for drugs pretty much everywhere in the developed world (e.g.). "Clean" and "airtight" is not good enough. So, aside from the problem of making sure catching the recipient doesn't lead authorities to the sender (which, like you say, there may exist a technical solution for), mailing drugs is only a good idea if you don't mind losing some fraction of your packages.
posted by caek at 6:48 AM on August 9, 2010

Best answer: Look up WebTryp, the 2009 online steroid busts and various MOMs.

This has been happening for years and years. It's very simple. The most basic way of sorting out logistics is to use Tor from public wifi spots (use a cantenna) to access GPG-encrypted email accounts in order to work out the details (blank subject lines, of course). Then the hard thing is sorting out payment (this can be done with CIM to drops, e-currency funded anonymously or things like topping up pre-paid credit cards). Next, an anonymous mail drop is needed (there are many ways to sort this out from phoney ID to other techniques). Of course, there are much more sophisticated techniques in use in various black markets.

You are mistaken on a lot of the details though. You should definitely use a valid return address. Read up on mail profiling.
posted by turkeyphant at 6:50 AM on August 9, 2010

Anything sent through the mail with no return address can potentially arouse suspicion, since it is normal to include a return address; your solution if you don't want people to be able to find you, would be to use a fake return address rather than no return address. If you were to mail lots of illegal packages at the same mail box, eventually there would be surveillance of that mail box in hopes of finding you, but if you vary the location at which you mail things, you really cannot be caught that way. The biggest technical difficulty is not in sending things to people but in receiving their payments (and this becomes an even bigger difficulty if you have dishonest customers who decide not to pay you). Customers have to have some specific place to send payments, and even if they send payments to an intermediary (such as PayPal) that intermediary still has to know where you are, and they can be legally compelled to divulge that information, by court order. The traditional method by which you make yourself available to clients but not available to the police is to deal only with people whom you know personally, but even that can fail. There is nothing to prevent undercover police from pretending to be innocent customers and even from getting to know you as personal friends, the better to penetrate through your layers of secrecy. The more successful you are at some illegal enterprise, the more effort the police will be willing to make in order to defeat you. Some people spend years creating false identities (much like Russian sleeper agents). No one can be trusted 100%, and almost anyone can be corrupted if enough pressure is put on them (the pressure may come from the police, or from other criminals, or from personal problems such as drug addiction, etc.)

UPS and other delivery services deliver parcels all the time without knowing what is in them, and that is perfectly legal. However, if it can be shown that a given courier had good reason to suspect that he or she was delivering something illegal, then there is a legal basis to charge that person as an accomplice to a crime.

There are no perfect solutions to the problem of making yourself available to customers but not available to the police. If customers can find you, the police can find you.
posted by grizzled at 6:52 AM on August 9, 2010

Some folks on my street ran a drug-selling ring just like this. The routine small FedEx shipments tipped the cops off; it's a common pattern for bottom-level drug distributors of higher-end Rx drugs, apparently. It took a while to get enough evidence for a warrant, and for a while these people had to ride their bikes everywhere, because the cops had a warrant for the car but not if it was in the garage or something like that, so there was this whole cat-and-mouse game going on, and then there was this absolutely endless stakeout, but eventually they gathered enough evidence to bust them. They lost their home to foreclosure, their child to DCFS, and the next few decades of their lives to prison.

Also, for Rx drugs at least, people can already buy them illegally through the mail from shady Caribbean pharmacies. Not sure why they'd want to buy from you when you add such an element of unknown risk. At least ordering from Caribbean pharmacies is a known risk.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:02 AM on August 9, 2010

Just a short follow-up to Eyebrows McGee - it's a really bad idea to ship using couriers like FedEx. Seizure rates are far higher. Even using registered post is a bad idea.
posted by turkeyphant at 7:49 AM on August 9, 2010

I have two words for you: search warrant.

Once the cops figure out that you're sending stuff through a delivery service, whether it's USPS, UPS, FedEx, bike messenger, passenger pigeon, you name it, they can get a warrant to search that package. The delivery service will comply faster than you can say "ten to twenty," because no one there wants to go down for aiding and abetting a criminal enterprise or obstruction of justice.

More than that though: using the post office to ship illegal goods or engage in illegal activity is, in itself, a felony. So you're actually making things worse, not better.
posted by valkyryn at 8:21 AM on August 9, 2010

The problem is your premise of a trusted network. The easiest way to bust a crime ring is by way of an informant, it doesn't take a very big ring for the odds that at least one member will be caught for something, often unrelated to your particular crime ring's purpose, and flip to be informants, to get very high. (It's easy enough to make a good living legally if you're smart, careful and hardworking that the proportion of criminals who aren't stupid, lazy or reckless is very low - and these things get you arrested like clockwork.)
posted by MattD at 8:40 AM on August 9, 2010

valkyryn: "I have two words for you: search warrant."

This affects the buyer not the seller. By staying sensible and mixing up mailing locations, there's little that can be done at that end.

MattD: "The problem is your premise of a trusted network. "

Unlike IRL dealing, the schema I outlined above provide anonymity between vendors and buyers. Of course if they are slack a string is possible, but customers-turned-informers isn't a real problem.
posted by turkeyphant at 8:58 AM on August 9, 2010

it would certainly be possible to send clients their drugs in the mail, in sealed, airtight, cleaned containers

It would be foolish to assume this. It would be foolish to assume that an "airtight seal" would prevent automated detection of the packages (assuming drugs). The level of cleanliness and sealing that are required for this to work is quite a lot higher than you might suppose. Recreational drugs (and a few other things) are comparatively easy chemicals to detect. This might well be caught very early on by the post office.
posted by bonehead at 12:13 PM on August 9, 2010

bonehead: "it would certainly be possible to send clients their drugs in the mail, in sealed, airtight, cleaned containers

It would be foolish to assume this. It would be foolish to assume that an "airtight seal" would prevent automated detection of the packages (assuming drugs). The level of cleanliness and sealing that are required for this to work is quite a lot higher than you might suppose. Recreational drugs (and a few other things) are comparatively easy chemicals to detect. This might well be caught very early on by the post office."

Do you have any direct experience of this? You are right about some aspects, but knowledge of pertinent data about the postal services and the level/types of screening employed suggest that it's perfectly possible to get letters through with a high receive rate. Empirical data back up this assertion.

Of course, packaging must be highly refined and some substances are not suitable, but the OP's assumption is fair.
posted by turkeyphant at 12:18 PM on August 9, 2010

it's perfectly possible to get letters through with a high receive rate. Empirical data back up this assertion. ...the OP's assumption is fair.

Today, right now, in certain juristictions, maybe. I would not count on this continuing.
posted by bonehead at 12:46 PM on August 9, 2010

Exactly, what changes do you anticipate which will change the situation? For the last however many years, even international packages arrive with a high receive rate in almost every jurisdiction. You have obviously though this through but do you have any practical experience?
posted by turkeyphant at 1:04 PM on August 9, 2010

Best answer: well ... I kinda work in this field (detection and prevention) ... and I can tell you that it is possible, in fact not even terribly difficult, and many people do currently do it with little risk and little loss of stock.

Also many people think they are doing it right, get it wrong, and get caught.

Of course detailing the steps would be a little outside the scope of askmefi's function ... but the poster is welcome to memail me if they have a legitimate interest.
posted by jannw at 7:14 PM on August 9, 2010