By Chris Landers and Van Smith

When law-enforcement agents intercept packages of illegal drugs moving through the U.S. Mail or a private parcel-delivery service, they use available clues about the packages to pursue criminal cases against those tied to the shipments. Mapping information from court records about six recent such cases links Baltimore to suppliers from faraway places: India, Oregon, Arizona, and Texas. The packages were headed to six Baltimore-area addresses, and each provides a real-life snapshot of the local drug economy. (PDFs of the court documents supporting the facts in this story are available below, on the left.)

When agents followed 233 grams of heroin secreted in a wooden picture frame sent in a package from Mumbai, India, they ended up tracking it on Nov. 17 to 8301 Thornton Road in Riderwood, a just-inside-the-Beltway neighborhood a few miles north of the Baltimore City line. The address would seem an unlikely destination for a heroin delivery: It’s the home of an elderly, infirm, and unsuspecting woman, who knew nothing about the illicit shipment. A federal grand jury indicted two other people in the case: Isaac Okebugwu and Shireen Sheppard, who worked at the Thornton Road house as a home healthcare worker for the elderly woman. Sheppard is accused of using the address to receive the drug shipment. They are both free pending trial and have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

A couple of weeks later, on Dec. 8, another package from Mumbai arrived in Lutherville, just a few miles away. It went to 8 Nightingale Way, an address at the Cardiff Charles apartments where Charles Street ends just north of the Beltway. It contained 519 grams of opium wrapped in plastic and stashed in a magazine. The resulting federal charges accuse Sharad Eknath Dhumal and Hooman Hemmati of arranging the shipment and contend that Dhumal was at the apartment when the parcel arrived and was arrested minutes later attempting to leave with it. The court records also state that Dhumal quickly admitted his knowledge of the shipment and told agents he was paid to receive it by Hemmati, owner of Bonos Pizza in Pasadena. He told authorities he had just been leaving to deliver the opium to the pizza shop when he was arrested. The two men were indicted on Dec. 16. Hemmati has been released while Dhumal has been detained; neither have been arraigned on the charges.

Three suspicious Baltimore-bound packages interdicted by postal inspectors at an incoming-mail facility in Linthicum were picked out by drug-sniffing dogs in September, and were found to contain pot. Two packages from Arizona arrived on Sept. 3. One came from Phoenix and was bound for an apartment at 2670 Kennedy Ave. in Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello, but inspectors determined that the names of the sender and the addressee did not match up with the locations. The other was from Scottsdale and was addressed to 22 Polaris Court in Parkville. Again, the labeling did not match up. K-9 Ozzy’s nose gave inspectors the thumbs-up to ask a judge for a warrant, and once opened, each was found to contain about six pounds of pot inside a Styrofoam Wal-Mart cooler. On Sept. 18, another suspicious package arrived, this one from Mission, Texas, and bound for 6401 Walther Ave. near Northern Parkway. Again, the names did not match up with the addresses. This time, K-9 Britta did the honors, adding about 10 and a half pounds of marijuana to her drug-seizure resume.

On Nov. 13, Britta worked her magic again, this time sensing drugs in a box bound for Fells Point from Corvallis, Ore. Inside were found a purple bed-sheet and about 10 and a half pounds of psilocybin mushrooms, also known as psychedelic mushrooms, in 10 clear plastic vacuum-sealed bags. The next day, when agents followed the package to 305 S. Anne St., they arrested the man who received it: George Victor Kraft, a fugitive from a California parole violation and an ex-con in Maryland for attempted armed robbery in the 1990s (“Bad Trip,” Mobtown Beat, Nov. 19). Also seized during the raid were a North Face backpack, an Under Armour backpack, a pocket scale, and cell phones belonging to Kraft (whose alias is listed in court records as “Jacob Medler”) and three other individuals. On Nov. 19, a federal grand jury indicted Kraft, alleging a drug conspiracy based on the mushroom shipment. He has been detained and has pleaded not guilty.

By Kevin Poulsen October 13, 2008 | 3:20:08 PM

DarkMarket.ws, an online watering hole for thousands of identify thieves, hackers and credit card swindlers, has been secretly run by an FBI cybercrime agent for the last two years, until its voluntary shutdown earlier this month, according to documents unearthed by a German radio network.

Reports from the German national police obtained by the Südwestrundfunk, Southwest Germany public radio, blow the lid off the long running sting by revealing its role in nabbing a German credit card forger active on DarkMarket. The FBI agent is identified in the documents as J. Keith Mularski, a senior cybercrime agent based at the National Cyber Forensics Training Alliance in Pittsburgh, who ran the site under the hacker handle Master Splynter.

The NCFTA is a non-profit information sharing alliance funded by financial firms, internet companies and the federal government. It’s also home to a seven-agent FBI headquarters unit called the Cyber Initiative and Resource Fusion Unit, which evidently ran the DarkMarket sting.

The FBI didn’t return a phone call Monday.

Like earlier crime sites, DarkMarket allowed buyers and sellers of stolen identities and credit card data to meet and do business in an entrepreneurial, peer-reviewed environment. Products for sale ran the gamut from specialized hardware, to electronic banking logins collected from phishing attacks, stolen personal data needed to assume a consumer’s identity (“full infos”) and credit card magstripe swipes (“dumps), which are used to produce counterfeit cards. Vendors were encouraged to submit their goods for review before offering them for sale.

The unearthed documents, seen by Threat Level, show the FBI sting had begun by November, 2006. An FBI memo sent to the German national police regarding a forum member in that country boasts, “Currently, the FBI has been successful in penetrating the inner ‘family’ of the carding forum, DarkMarket.” A March 2007 e-mail from Mularski’s FBI address to his German counterpart puts it bluntly. “Master Splynter is me.”

The documents indicate the FBI used DarkMarket to build “intelligence briefs” on its members, complete with their internet IP addresses and details of their activities on the site. In at least some cases, the bureau matched the information with transaction records provided by the electronic currency service E-Gold.

Last month, Master Splyntr — now identified as Mularski — announced he was shuttering the site as of October 4th, citing unwanted attention garnered by a fellow administrator, known as Cha0. From his home in Turkey, Cha0 had aggressively marketed  a high-quality ATM skimmer and PIN pad that fraudsters could covertly affix to certain models of cash machines, capturing consumers account numbers and secret codes. But he began drawing heat this year after reportedly kidnapping and torturing a police informant. He was arrested in Turkey last month, where police identified him as one Cagatay Evyapan.

That’s why it was time to close DarkMarket, Master Splynter explained, in a message that now rings with irony.

“It is apparent that this forum … is attracting too much attention from a lot of the world services (agents of FBI, SS, and Interpol). I guess it was only time before this would happen. It is very unfortunate that we have come to this situation, because … we have established DM as the premier English speaking forum for conducting business. Such is life. When you are on top, people try to bring you down.”

The German report confirm rumors that have swirled around DarkMarket since late 2006, when uber-hacker Max Ray Butler cracked the site’s server and announced to the underground that he’d caught Master Splynter logging in from the NCFTA’s office on the banks of the Monongahela River. Butler ran a site of his own, and the warning was generally dismissed as inter-forum rivalry, even when Butler was arrested in San Francisco last year on credit card fraud charges, and shipped to Pittsburgh for prosecution.

Until this afternoon, SpamHaus listed Master Splynter as an Eastern European spammer named Pavel Kaminski, who was active as recently as 2005. It’s possible the FBI took over the handle sometime thereafter. In 2004, the Secret Service ran a similar scheme on the crime board ShadowCrew, but that agency used an informant, who went on to commit more crimes — a risk not likely present with agent Mularski.

Lord Cyric, another former DarkMarket administrator, says Master Splynter was invited onto DarkMarket as an admin about two years ago, and was still known as a spammer. Based in Canada, Lord Cyric has sold fake IDs and checks in the underground, but he’s convinced he’s out of reach of any sting operation.

“Worry? Me? Nah,” he wrote in an IM interview. “It’s a long, slow hard process for them to interest Canadian [law enforcement] to go after someone who doesn’t touch drugs nor deals with skimmers. … It’s all about U.S. busts, unless there’s a big drug deal and DEA gets involved.”

Threat Level admires Lord Cyric’s bluster, but thinks his days in the underground are numbered.  The FBI almost certainly closed DarkMarket in preparation for a global wave of arrests that will unfold in the next month or so. The site was likely shuttered to avoid an Agatha Christie scenario in which a diminishing pool of cybercrooks are free to speculate about why they’re disappearing one-by-one like the hapless dinner guests in Ten Little Indians.

Kudos to Südwestrundfunk reporter Kai Laufen, who discovered the operation. I’m sending him the “I Spotted the Fed” tee-shirt I took home from DefCon 7.

Posted by Thomas Firey

Just north of D.C., in the small suburb of Berwyn Heights, a county SWAT team raided a house last week after a shipping service delivered a large quantity of illegal drugs to the front door.

Good police work in the war on drugs? Probably not.

The house is home to Berwyn Heights mayor Cheye Calvo and his wife Trinity Tomsic, and their two black Labs (pictured left). Though the package containing more than 30 lbs. of marijuana was addressed to Tomsic, the couple may have had nothing to do with the drugs. In recent months there have been incidents in which large quantities of drugs were shipped to homes in the D.C. area, where they were then supposed to be intercepted by drug dealers — all without the package addressees’ knowledge or involvement. Calvo and Tomsic may have been caught up in just such a scheme.

This would make Calvo and Tomsic the unfortunate victims of an understandable error by the police SWAT team, except…

The police action was yet another guns-ablazin’, no-knock raid, in which the officers (in what seems like SOP) shot the couple’s dogs, even as one of the pups tried to run away. The cops then handcuffed Calvo and his mother-in-law and interrogated them for hours, while the dogs’ bodies laid in pools of blood nearby. The cops later found the package of drugs — unopened, as if it were an unexpected package. No arrests were made.

“My government blew through my doors and killed my dogs,” Calvo told the Washington Post. “They thought we were drug dealers, and we were treated as such. I don’t think they really ever considered that we weren’t.”

Of course, it may end up that Calvo and his wife are part of a drug distribution ring, and the police have gotten their man. But even if that’s true, was a no-knock, shoot-the-dogs raid an appropriate police action for a lousy shipment of pot?

And what if the current, emerging picture is correct, and this is yet another botched police raid and cops-gone-wild? If that’s the case (and I emphazie the “if”), the Prince George’s County SWAT team and its superiors need to be held accountable.

Law enforcement officers have a difficult and dangerous job, and I do not make light of that. But their sworn duty is to protect and serve the public, not blast their way into innocent people’s houses and shoot their dogs. If they cannot fulfill that duty, then they cannot be law enforcement officers.

UPDATE (8/6): It turns out that the Prince George’s County police who no-knock raided Calvo and Tomsic’s home did not have a no-knock warrant. The police did have a standard search warrant (which they apparently failed to show to Calvo, as they are supposed to). If that warrant had been executed properly, it is unlikely that Calvo and Tomsic’s dogs would have been killed or their house damaged. Add one more to the long list of botched police raids.

This also raises an interesting question: If this illegal raid had been visited on someone other than a white mayor, would it be receiving the scrutiny it deserves?

A SECOND, MORE TROUBLING UPDATE (8/7) is here.

Original CNN link broken.

The raids followed months of investigation launched after police became suspicious of online orders for GBL, a chemical found in industrial cleaners, Bavarian state investigators said.

The legal chemical can be used to manufacture GHB, a potent depressant sometimes called the date-rape drug.

The GBL orders were placed to a chemical company near Munich and another in northern Germany, investigators said.

Swiss police searched a number of houses in 17 cantons, or states, the country’s Federal Police Office said.

Some of the searched premises allegedly housed laboratories for the production of synthetic drugs, the office said.

In Austria, Interior Ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia said three houses were searched in the states of Carinthia, Lower Austria and Styria, where a possible drug lab was found.

Publication date unknown.

If investigators want to bust you for a juice package, their goal will be to get you to take possession of the package. There are two reasons: 1) Once you accept a package of contraband, you can be arrested for possessing it; and 2) The feds will have generally obtained a warrant to search your house that cannot be executed until you accept the package. That’s where your signature comes in. Signing for the package removes any argument that you didn’t accept it. Especially when it’s supported by the undercover agent’s testimony about the conversation that took place. “Are you Johnny Johnson?” You said, “Yes.” “Will you accept this package?” You said, “Of course!” and looked really excited when you saw the return address from China. Could accepting possession be proven in other ways? Absolutely. The issue is determined by looking at everything you did and said. In the conversation we just described, you said you were the person who intended to receive the package, and you explicitly stated that you would accept it. The absence of a signature won’t magically protect you! What if you refuse to sign, but try to accept the package verbally? A real courier wouldn’t give it to you if a signature was required, but let’s say this undercover agent courier would. Have you avoided an arrest and search? Of course not, because you’ve accepted the package! What’s more, your cagey behavior will be used against you to prove your knowledge of the illegal contents of the package – why else would you refuse to sign? I’ve seen a number of cases where the target gets a funky feeling about the delivery guy and rejects the package. The undercover courier will then do everything possible to get the package into the target’s hands, with or without a signature. It’s the only way to execute the raid. In one desperate case, the courier blew his cover and flashed a badge. He summoned his partner, and the two asked to step inside to talk about the package. The target told them he had no idea what was in the package and that they most certainly could not come into his house. The agents said the package contained suspected drugs, and asked if they could open it. “Do what you want, it’s not my package.” They opened it, and inside were 500 Anabol tablets. “My mistake,” one agent said. “These are okay. You can import a personal use supply. Here, you can take them.” Nice try. The target told the agent to stick the tabs where the sun don’t shine and avoided an arrest and raid by the eight other agents skulking in wait just off the property. Given the headaches presented by savvy suspects, law enforcers are taking a new approach: wiring the package to signal when it’s opened. When someone opens a package, that’s good evidence that he’s the one who knowingly intended to possess it, right? It might even be stronger evidence than signing for it. The application for the search warrant will request authorization to execute the raid once the signal goes off. Several jurisdictions have begun using electronic signaling devices, typically AT-4’s, to confirm that a target has opened his package. No part of the device is visible unless the package is opened. It makes no audible sound but transmits an alert signal to a remote receiver manned by the agents. These devices are perfect in cases where a signature request might spook the target. An AT-4 can make the difference between a botched operation and a valid arrest and raid. Be aware that it’s likely the wave of the future. [For a complete discussion of controlled deliveries, check out Legal Muscle].

Video no longer available.

27/06/08 19:47 CET

Millions of fake medical treatments are finding their way into the EU each year. Many of them are bought over the internet. Sometimes causing dangerous side-effects – sometimes simply having no effect at all – they are posing a growing challenge to those charged with keeping EU citizens healthy and safe.

Tue Jul 22, 2008 09:48 AM

“The three owners of Internet currency service e-gold have pled guilty to money laundering in the U.S. District Court for D.C.. The service is based in the West Indies, but the directors apparently live in Florida. They haven’t been sentenced yet, but potentially face decades in prison and millions in fines. In addition, the principal director posted a blog entry yesterday saying that ‘criminal activity will not be tolerated,‘ and pledging to eliminate the loopholes that allowed money laundering to thrive on the service. He also claims that e-gold has more transaction volume in a single quarter than all of the first-generation Web currency services like Cybercash, Beenz, and Flooz completed over their lifetimes. Ironically, one of the reasons that contributed to Flooz’s demise in 2001 was rampant money laundering.”

www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-fedex0705,0,1316763.story
Undercover officers arrest suspect using shipment of pot sent to wrong address

by Gus G. Sentementes and Annie Linskey | Sun reporters
July 5, 2008

When it absolutely, positively had to get there, someone in Florida used Fed-Ex to ship marijuana to addresses in the Baltimore area. But the shipping company botched one of the deliveries, triggering an undercover operation that led to the arrest of a city man and the seizure of 600 pounds of the drug, police said yesterday.

Police were tipped off when four boxes were mistakenly delivered Tuesday to a Northeast Baltimore resident who opened one and discovered a “large shrink wrapped bundle of a green plant material,” charging documents say. City officers and Maryland State Police troopers posed as FedEx employees the next day to snare the intended recipient of the 200-pound shipment.

A search yesterday of two addresses connected to the suspect, Richard Gwatidzo of the 4200 block of Diller Ave., yielded eight more FedEx packages containing nearly 400 pounds of marijuana, police said.

Maj. John Hess, a commander in the city Police Department’s Violent Crime Impact Division, whose detectives led the investigation, estimated that marijuana sells for about $1,200 a pound on the street.

Across the country, law enforcement agencies routinely pursue drug dealers who use private shipping companies to move their illicit products or large amounts of cash across state lines. The Baltimore Police Department has a small unit of officers — known as the “parcel interdiction group” — who focus on “incoming and outgoing” parcels in Baltimore, Hess said.

“This year has been incredible, between marijuana, heroin and cash seizures,” he said.

Shipping companies regularly cooperate with police and allow detectives to pose as their workers, according to news reports.

“We don’t tolerate the illegal use of our network,” said Matt Ceniceros, a FedEx spokesman. “When it is suspected that our network is abused, we work with the proper authorities to make sure it stops.”

Police charging documents lay out the details of the marijuana-mailing mishap.

On Tuesday, two city police officers responded to an undisclosed address in Northeast Baltimore where a resident showed them four FedEx packages. One was open and contained suspected marijuana. The resident, who was not identified by police, was expecting FedEx packages, but not ones filled with marijuana, according to the documents.

“As the officers entered the residence, they immediately detected an odor that they knew to be marijuana,” the documents state.

Officers confiscated the packages and took them back to the Northeastern District station for processing. The opened box weighed 38 pounds, while the others weighed in at 45, 55 and and 60 pounds — for a total of 198 pounds.

Looking for help on the case, the officers contacted a city detective who serves on Baltimore’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area federal task force. Later that day, they tried to deliver the packages but were unsuccessful, the documents state.

The next day, a man who claimed to be the intended recipient of the packages called FedEx to ask about the status of his delivery. But a state trooper — posing as a FedEx employee — picked up the phone. The man told the trooper that his packages had not been delivered. The trooper told him they would arrive later that same day, between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., police charging documents state.

About 2 p.m., a city police detective posing as a FedEx delivery truck driver pulled up in front of the address marked on the package: an office in the 3400 block of Belair Road.

As the detective stepped out of the truck holding one of the four packages, a man approached, stopped him and said: “That’s my box,” according to police. The man signed the FedEx receipt and then turned to walk away. A team of officers waiting in cars nearby swooped in and arrested him, according to police charging documents.

Gwatidzo, 30, was charged Thursday with possession of a large quantity of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute, along with other drug-related charges. He is being held at the Central Booking and Intake Center on $1 million bail.

Police served search and seizure warrants at two addresses — the T. Ryan Art Institute in the 3400 block of Belair Road and a residence in the 10200 block of S. Dolfield Road in Owings Mills — where Gwatidzo allegedly received large packages of marijuana via two FedEx shipments recently, Hess said. In total, detectives seized eight more boxes that contained 398 pounds of marijuana from those locations, Hess said.

More charges could be lodged against Gwatidzo, including federal criminal sanctions, said Hess, who also credited Baltimore County police and agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration with working quickly together on the case.

The packages were shipped by someone in Pembroke Pines, Fla., Hess said. Pembroke Pines is a small community north of Miami. Investigators are working to determine the identity of the sender, he said.

Brian Furer Was Arrested At Home

Updated: [March 22, 2008 ] :: 01:01:19

100 Drug Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.) officers, equipped with arrest warrants, in co-operation with Thai police, today arrested a British gang selling steroids illegally in Soi Chaiyapreuk, Pattaya and seized assets worth over Bt 20 million
At 8.00 am, 21 March, 2008, Police Major General, Amaresrit Wattanawiboon, Commander of Office of the Narcotics Control Board,(ONCB) who had been co-ordinating with Mr.Andre Kellum, an officer of the D.E.A, acknowledged that there was a gang of foreigners who were running a network selling steroid in Pattaya.

The police and D.E.A. officers, acting on arrest warrant no. 98/255, searched a two-storey house in Pattaya New City Village, Soi Chaiyapreuk , Jomtien Beach Road. The police later arrested Mr.Edwin Richard Crawley (44) a British national who lives in the house, which he had used as the centre of operations for his business. According to the police report, Mr. Edwin Richard Crawley originally opened a company called” Nutri Med. Co. Ltd.” registered as an import-export company. However, police did not find any illegal items or incriminating evidence, only documents relating to the import and export of goods.

Another police team also searched a single house opposite and found Mr. Graisorn Tongrak (31) the son- in-law of Mr.Edwin Richard Crawley, who was looking after the house for his father- in-law. Once again, police did not find any illegal items.

After that, the police took both suspects to search another building in the same soi, registered as a company called” Vincent Centre Service Co. Ltd. operating a postal and utility bill payment service. Here, however, police found several empty bags of drugs, called “British Dragon” and 2,500 copies of steroid instruction sheets.

The D.E.A. officers took the steroids away for evidence. They also searched a warehouse behind the Nutri Med. company office, where they found and confiscated two machines used to pack steroids and also seized two land deed papers relating to the two houses, a Toyota car, a BMW R1200 RT motorbike, and 13 bank books which contained millions of baht; in total property worth about Bt 20 million.

A third group of police later arrested Mr.Ashley Vincent Livingston (45) British, and Mrs. Jirawan Livingston(38) , his wife, living at a house in Moo. 10, Soi Kow Noi, Pattaya Hill 1. According to the information police had received, they all belonged to the same gang, whose big boss was Edwin Richard Crawley. At this house, the police did not find any evidence, but seized a land deed paper, a Honda and a Toyota car, jewellery, Bt 100,000 in cash, and six bank books, which had many tens of millions of baht in the accounts. Police Major General, Amaresrit Wattanawiboon, revealed that Thai police were originally notified by the D.E.A. that they had intercepted steroids, which had been delivered to America in plain envelopes and on investigation, discovered that the biggest operation was in Pattaya . Mr. Edwin (the big boss) had been importing steroids from China through the Internet and then forwarding them to USA and Europe. On receipt, customers would send money to his account in Thailand. Some of the goods were sent to Pattaya and repacked in dolls or fruit, to be sent to Europe by parcel or in plain envelopes. Mr. Ashley had been worked with Mr. Edwin as his assistant, finding customers for him. This operation had been running since 1999. It made him a millionaire, being able to afford to buy property in Pattaya worth Bt 20 million. Mr. Edwin was also a volunteer, helping charities in Pattaya, so he was well known among the high-society set. He is also the coach of a disabled weight lifting team, which has won many trophies.

Despite Mr. Edwin’s other good works, police arrested him and the other gang members, committing them for trial on charges of having imported, possessed and exported illegal drugs as well as not having paid tax. After a Thai trial, they will all be sent to America for further processing.

News Type : Crime
Story : Kampee
Photo : Kampee
Translater : Sirithanon