Australian Authorities Held A Woman For Buying Illicit Drugs

A 32-year old Brisbane woman was held by the Australian federal authorities for buying illegal drugs from the United Kingdom making use of bitcoin.

The Australian Border Force (ABF) Queensland regional commander Terry Price sent a warning saying ‘People shouldn’t assume the dark web is invisible to Australian agencies,’ going on to reveal details of a joint-investigation with the Australian Federal Police (AFP).

The two agencies have made several drug importation and trafficking charges on a Brisbane woman who is alleged to have bought controlled drugs from a dark web portal with bitcoin. According to the police, the woman has ordered, paid and planned several shipments of illegal drugs from the UK.

At the initial stage, in December 2017, authorities notices ‘a small amount of MDMA’ in a parcel delivery from UK to a Brisbane address. Later on, in January, ABF officers noticed another parcel containing Fentanyl, from the UK to the same address.

This lead to the beginning of investigations and search warrants were finally executed on February 2, resulting to the confiscations of the anonymous quantities of MDMA (Ecstacy), LSD, Oxycodone and Dimethylthyltrytamine(DMT) according to the report.

The Regional Commander Price noted that the law enforcement agencies in Australia and the UK are keeping a close eye on the dark web portal. The Commander went on to add that, “Through close collaboration with our law enforcement partners we are able to detect imports purchased through these [darknet] sites.”

This is not the first time the Australian authorities have confiscated crypto-related drug purchases. There had been a previous case where 24,518 bitcoins were confiscated which was less than $10 million in 2014 during the time and merely less than $200 million presently.