Hunting the darknet dealers

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.3 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2022

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The high stakes cat and mouse game between police and darknet drug dealers. Police in the UK say they are finally turning the tide on drug dealers selling on the darknet – a secretive part of the internet which has been described as like “online shopping for drugs.”

The UK’s National Crime Agency says recent international takedowns of so called dark markets and arrests in multiple countries are a result of new techniques in cyber policing that is giving them the upper hand. However, BBC research suggests that police around the world have an uphill struggle on their hands as many dealers - known as vendors - have survived multiple market place collapses by operating across many different darknet sites.

The programme explores the major role played by UK dealers in the global business which is estimated to be worth more than a billion dollars a year. The BBC’s cyber reporter Joe Tidy and BBC data journalist Alison Benjamin journey into this hidden world to speak to vendors and buyers and uncover secrets of the trade.

Reporter: Joe Tidy Producer: Paul Grant Editor: Maggie Latham

(Image: An ecstasy pill bought on the darknet, being tested at a lab in the UK. Credit: BBC)

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to assignment on the BBC World Service, with me, Joe Tidy.
0:07.0	I got a phone call about midnight, I think, from one of Luke's friends trying to track me down.
0:16.0	She'd heard that Luke had been taken away in an ambulance and I needed to go to the hospital.
0:26.0	Claire Campbell remembers every detail of the night her son died.
0:32.0	16-year-old Luke had collapsed at an under-18s club night while celebrating the end of his exams in the UK.
0:39.0	And I got there and I don't know how to put it, I knew it was bad.
0:45.0	I sort of went straight to the crash room.
0:49.0	I can't remember if I am the door, but I feel like I did.
0:52.0	My son here is my son here and they took me in to see Luke and he was packed in ice.
1:00.0	They were working on him constantly.
1:04.0	When I got there, Mum was in hysterics, crying and the whole way there,
1:11.0	I just thought he'd jumped into my child's core and he needed to have a stomach pump or something.
1:14.0	They said that he'd taken something and they think it was ecstasy.
1:20.0	At one point, there was hope.
1:23.0	Claire and her daughter Esther went in to see Luke.
1:26.0	They would let us touch him and be with him and stroke his hair and kiss him and come on, Lukey, come on, Lukey.
1:34.0	They had impact in ice because he was so hot, his core body temperature went up so high and they moved him up to the ICU.
1:43.0	The consultant came and said, you've got to come now, you've got to come now and I thought he'd work it up.
1:51.0	She's working up, that's why she'd asked Esther to come in.
1:57.0	Look at that.
2:00.0	She should get some sugar.
2:02.0	She just left the poor machine off.
	...

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