A US man who admitted to selling over two kilograms of MDMA on a darknet market was sentenced to 42 months in prison last week. Vishesh Aragam Guruprasad, 31, a resident of Maryland, pled guilty to charges related to drug distribution conspiracy, admitting he had purchased the MDMA from an overseas DNM vendor and resold it on the now-defunct Dream marketplace. He had also used “various darkweb marketplaces” to purchase marijuana and heroin, completing over 1,000 orders as a vendor on Dream.
Aragam, who operated as vendor between Jul 2016 and Feb 2019, ordered the drugs from another vendor in the United Kingdom and sent to two co-conspirators, who delivered to his residence. In addition to repackaging them and selling them on Dream to customers across the US, he also sold drugs locally from his own residence. He completed most of his orders on Dream under the vendor names Rolling_rocks and PLANETEXPRESS27, which appear to have used the same PGP key, according to an old post on Dread.
Apr 2018 post on Dread asking about the quality of Aragam’s MDMA.
An investigation into the vendor’ dealings was launched in Aug 2018 after an informant told federal investigators Aragam revealed to him that he was mailing out packages of MDMA under the Rolling_rocks vendors name.
In Feb 2019, the PO box of one of Aragam’s conspirators was searched by a postal inspector where they found two packages mailed from the UK. Investigators opened one of the two packages, which contained a substance that was later identified as MDMA. The other package was delivered to Aragam’s home. On Feb 11, investigators searched the trash of the residence and discovered two envelopes with stamps from the UK which were later found to have been mailed to his co-conspirators.
A search warrant was executed at Aragam’s home in Apr 2019, where 92.8 grams of MDMA, four rifles, a shotgun and over 1,100 rounds of ammunition were seized. Investigators also found marijuana and a one-gram mixture of phenylethyl and fentanyl.
In court, Aragam admitted to transferring 18 BTC which he had received from his sales on Dream to a cryptocurrency exchange in Jun 2017, which he then transferred to a “virtual wallet spend account” under his name at his bank.
In addition to being sentenced to three and a half years in prison, Aragam will serve four years of supervised release upon conclusion of the sentence.