Viennese Sell Drugs on the Dark Web, Receive Money in Bitcoin

A 50-year-old Viennese man is wanted worldwide for alleged drug dealing. Over a two-year period, he is said to have sold several kilograms of cocaine on the dark web, processing 11,500 orders through the "MrBlow" dark web marketplace. As part of Operation Drain, the Austrian Federal Criminal Police managed to arrest the perpetrators in April 2021. However, shortly before that, the 50-year-old absconded.

On Saturday, the violent armed man's face was published as "most wanted" on the homepage of the Austrian Federal Criminal Police Office and on the website of Europol.

"General importer of cocaine"

The Viennese man is said to have supplied the red-light district with drugs for decades. According to investigators, he described himself as a "general importer of cocaine. He is also said to have been close to the mastermind of the "Club Nokia" at the time, which was formed in the early 2000s to extort protection money. He has never been convicted of drug trafficking, but has been tried several times for violent crimes.

Over two years, he and his gang allegedly sold about 60 kilograms of drugs - 40 kilograms of cocaine and the rest in marijuana, amphetamines and ecstasy - and used the virtual currency Bitcoin to make payments. Over time, a profit of €2.5 million is said to have been made.

Fear of trained butchers

This group of perpetrators is so professional that surveillance of the suspects is almost impossible to manage due to their modus operandi, such as the use of destructive techniques to disrupt police investigation methods. In addition, some of these associates, who have been legally sentenced to several years in prison, were extremely fearful of the 50-year-old trained butcher.

Police began tracking the gang of 10 people in 2018. Four years ago, sporadic shipments containing drugs were found at post offices, partly because thick envelopes had been torn open. The recipients were investigated and led investigators to the dark web store "MrBlow," where whole bricks of cocaine were unabashedly displayed to offer the addictive drug for sale.

Before the dark web store was abruptly shut down in September 2020, an average of 12 orders a day were processed by the group. Predictably, the 50-year-old knew he was under investigation.

Terabytes of data

On April 20, 2021, the Austrian Federal Criminal Police conducted a raid on 11 locations in Vienna and Styria. Money, weapons, packaging materials and more than 250 IT devices were seized during 23 house searches.

The biggest challenge was sifting through them (digital forensics). Officers said, "The amount of this data we searched was literally terabytes and the data was encrypted and only fragments were found, such as the MrBlow website logo."

Austrian police are currently on a worldwide hunt for the "godfather of cocaine."