Studying Illicit Drug Trafficking on Darknet Markets: Structure & Organisation from a Canadian Perspective

Cryptomarkets are online marketplaces that are part of the Dark Web and mainly devoted to the sale of illicit drugs. They combine tools to ensure anonymity of participants with the delivery of products by mail to enable the development of illicit drug trafficking. 

Using data collected on eight cryptomarkets, this study provides an overview of the Canadian illicit drug market. It seeks to inform about the most prevalent illicit drugs vendors offer for sale and preferred destination countries. Moreover, the research gives an insight into the structure and organisation of distribution networks existing online. In particular, we provide information about how vendors are diversifying and replicating across marketplaces. We inform on the number of listings each vendor manages, the number of cryptomarkets they are active on and the products they offer. 

This research demonstrates the importance of online marketplaces in the context of illicit drug trafficking. It shows how the analysis of data available online may elicit knowledge on criminal activities. Such knowledge is mandatory to design efficient policy for monitoring or repressive purposes against anonymous marketplaces. 

Nevertheless, trafficking on Dark Net markets is difficult to analyse based only on digital data. A more holistic approach for investigating this crime problem should be developed. This should rely on a combined use and interpretation of digital and physical data within a single collaborative intelligence model.

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By:  Broséus J1, Rhumorbarbe D2, Mireault C3, Ouellette V3, Crispino F3, Décary-Hétu D4.

• 1Ecole des sciences criminelles, Faculté de droit, des sciences criminelles et d'administration publique, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Electronic address: julian.broseus@unil.ch.
• 2Ecole des sciences criminelles, Faculté de droit, des sciences criminelles et d'administration publique, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
• 3Département de Chimie, biochimie et physique, Laboratoire de recherche en criminalistique, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Québec, Canada.
• 4Université de Montréal, École de criminologie, Québec, Canada. 
• Forensic Sci Int. 2016 Mar 5;264:7-14. doi: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2016.02.045

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