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A 36-year-old French citizen pleaded guilty this week to US courts for selling Bitcoin narcotics on the obscure web. Guy Vallerius, who worked under the monk "OxyMonster", was arrested by authorities at the Atalanta airport last September while he was traveling to Austin, Texas, to take part in the World Beard and Mustache championships.
The authorities discover the identity of OxyMonster
As the criminal complaint presented last year's events, the US authorities were able to identify Vallerius as OxyMonster – in addition to keeping it under surveillance – after discovering one of its Bitcoin accounts. They arrived at his Bitcoin account through the "tip jar" of Vallerius in the Dream Market dark web market.
The purpose of the flagship jar was to allow Dream Market buyers to tip Vallerius for its services by selling the opioid painkiller Oxycodone and ADHD's RHDD medication. The problem for Vallerius was, unlike most sellers in the Dream Market, that it did not configure its advice to go through the internal payment systems of the market, which passed transactions through a tumbler / mixer. Instead, he set the tip jar to receive funds on a Bitcoin address he set up.
The complaint states:
"After observing the bitcoin & # 39; jar & # 39; advertised by OxyMonsyter, the agents led [an] analysis of the incoming and outgoing transactions from that bitcoin address and learned that 15 out of 17 outgoing transactions from the flagship jar OxyMonster went to more portfolios controlled by the French national Gal VALLERIUS on localbitcoins.com. "
This shift allowed the forces of order to have a clue as to who might be behind the OxyMonster monicker. Their suspicions were then confirmed when an analysis of the writing styles of OxyMonster and Valleri suggested that they were the same person:
"Open source data revealed that VALLERIUS has Instagram and Twitter accounts." Agents compared the writing style of OxyMonster to the Dream Market forum while he was in the role of Senior Moderator in VALLERIO's writing style in his public Instagram and Twitter accounts. The agents have discovered many similarities in the use of words and punctuation to include: the word "hurray", double exclamation, frequent use of quotation marks, and intermittent French messages. "
The identity of Vallerius was confirmed when the border agents subjected him to a search at the Atlanta airport, following a search for his laptop, which was then seized.
Following the search and seizure, the agents found compromising evidence on the laptop, including the PGP encryption key that OxyMonster used to sign online messages, the OxyMonster access credentials for the Dream Market and the Bitcoin addresses associated with the accounts of OxyMonster suppliers. According to the authorities, the portfolios contained a combined value of $ 500,000 for cryptocurrency.
Vallerius Excepts Plea Deal
Fast forward to this week. After fighting the charges for almost a year in attempts to avoid a life sentence, Vallerius pleaded guilty to plea bargaining, admitting to selling Oxycodone and Ritalin in the Dream Market under the name of OxyMonster.
Officially, Vallerius pleaded guilty to conspiring to possess with the intention of distributing controlled substances and conspiracy to launder money. This is because not only was it a seller, but also an administrator and moderator in the Dream Market. Thanks to his plea bargain, Vallerius now faces a sentence of 20 years in prison, not of life.
Over the past year, US authorities have reported many users of the dark web markets. In February, two dozen ensigns from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, were load with being part of a plan designed to sell drugs purchased with Bitcoin on the obscure web.
But despite high profile cases like these, relationships At the beginning of this year the Foundation for Defense of Democracies found that, in reality, less than 1% of Bitcoin is used for illegal or nefarious purposes. Going forward, it is important to remember that criminals have existed since the beginning of time – long before Bitcoin – and will continue to take advantage of new technologies to their advantage.
