OPERATION RAP TOR

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Cases of the FBI podcast, retired agents share
some of their most incredible cases. Let's begin. Drugs on

(01:01):
the dark Net global operation targeting dark net trafficking leads
to over two hundred and seventy arrests. The FBI agents
entered an LA home that they have believed to be
a hub for one of the most prolific methamphetamine and
cocaine distributors on the dark net. In one of the bedrooms,
they saw what looked like a tiny small business center.
There were desktops, laptop, thumb drives, a printer, shred er,

(01:24):
postage stams, everything you need for a business, and copious
amounts of illegal drugs. The April ninth search and arrest
of four subjects, led by the FBI's Joint Criminal Opiate
and Dark Net Enforcement Team, carried out by FBI LA
and the DEA, was part of a coordinated operation across
four continents and season more than two hundred million dollars

(01:44):
in currency and over fifteen hundred kilos of drugs, including FETNOHL.
An Operation Raptor. Participating law enforcement agencies in the US, Europe,
South America, and Asia arrested two hundred and seventy dark
net vendors, here's and administrators. The darknt is a portion
of the Internet that is not indexed by traditional search
engines and is only accessible through specialized software. The results

(02:08):
of the operation were just announced. More than one hundred
and forty kilos of fetnol were season the year's operation,
which included arrests all over the world Austria, Brazil, France,
Germany and so forth. In the US, just one kilo
of fetannel has the potential to kill thousands of people,
they say. The FBI established the JOCD in twenty eighteen

(02:30):
to target drug trafficking, so a big operation in LA again.
Large amounts of cash and suspected drugs were found, and
other drugs included sol cocaine, methamphetamine, MDMA, ketamine. Vendors on
seventeen different markets, Ten dark net vendors on seventeen different markets.

(02:51):
I'm sorry. They would package and ship the parcels allegedly
of drugs to the US Postal Service, so they'll get
slapped with those charges as well. Dark net marketplaces may
look familiar to online shoppers, but there are shopping carts,
thousands of products, sales promotions, but instead of food, or
clothes or furniture. The sites menus direct customers to products
like cocaine, heroin, fetnahl, and other types of drugs. Yeah,

(03:15):
marketplaces are access to software that claims to make the
buyer and sell are anonymous. It's not like you're dealing
with your local neighborhood dealer, even a cartel member. The
dark net vendors that they investigate truly operating a global scale,
and their ability to reach and sell drugs to the consumer.
The drug users are anywhere in the world, combining their
conducts on their phones or computers without having a risk

(03:36):
of face to face interaction. One of the things that
makes a darknet marketplace so dangerous is that is the
fact that it's such an easy to use platform. So
a good job to them is they target the dark
net an operation wraptor