An unnamed 25-year-old Brazilian man was arrested in Brazil’s Federal District on charges related to trafficking synthetic drugs via darknet markets yesterday, Friday, March 3rd. The man, who is said to have “advanced knowledge in the field of information technology,” was arrested by Brazilian Civil Police who were serving out to search and seizure warrants in the administrative area of Recanto das Emas.
The arrest is part of what Brazil’s Special Police Station for the Repression of Cyber Crimes (DRCC) has named Operation Abyssal, which has the objective of combating the trafficking of synthetic drugs procured on the dark web. For years, Brazil has witnessed a rise in synthetic drug traffickers in the Federal District of Brasilia, the nation’s capital, who use it as a base to ship the drugs out to other areas of country.
Photo of the arrested. Source: Metropoles.com
The DRCC had been monitoring drug shipments as part of the operation which were being sent to nearly all parts of the country. Computers and mobile devices sized from the arrested individual contained messages linked to the sale of drugs through the dark web. In this instance, drugs being trafficked by the arrested were bound for the small state of Piauí.
The operation began after investigators made the discovery of a darknet market specializing in the sale of synthetic drugs to residents of Brazil. Such drugs include synthetic analogs that reproduce the effects of MDMA (Ecstasy), amphetamine (Adderall), and fentanyl. Upon receipt of payment – usually occurring in Bitcoin – the narcotics were sent through the local postal system.
In recent years, Brazilian drug dealers have turned inward to meet demands of their customers, eschewing traditional imports of methamphetamine from Mexico and MDMA from Netherlands in favor of producing their own analogs domestically. Particularly popular among drug-seeking Brazilians are synthetic party drugs, such as “pink cocaine,” a hallucinogen with similar properties to MDMA.