Sam Bent
Appearances
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
I taught myself about macronutrients, micronutrients, deep water cultures, scrobs, all this kind of stuff, aeration and nutrient deficiencies and how to tell nutrient deficiencies in plants. I had learned all this stuff and I had wanted to cultivate cannabis for the longest time.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Yeah, so I want to say on the first week, I made about 300 bucks. And then the second week, it was probably about $500. So it was definitely, it was a slow start. But had I not spent that month making those posts, I would have had no sales.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So I'm like, you know, if I'm the manufacturer and I'm the retailer, my ROI will be insane. So like with my moonshine, like I could spend 10 to 14 dollars and I could turn that into 100 dollars at a minimum. And like that. And then if I made apple pie brandy from that, multiply that by five. And that was my my return was like, you know, 500 bucks.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So like for me, one thing I came to find out was that USPS on their website, you can order free supplies, right? So like if you want bubble wrap, like instead of buying bubble wrap from Amazon with your credit card, having it sent to your house and going through a ton of it, you can order envelopes from USPS or pick them up in person, right? And now you don't have a credit card purchase, right?
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
for one less of your shipping supplies anyway. And then I would take, I would order like generic catalogs that were really big, like Granger that had 500 to like 2000 pages in them. And I would tear out the pages, crumple them up into a ball and throw them in there. And I would pack it. So like, there's no packing peanuts. So now I don't have to buy that on Amazon.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
You know, like I would make sure that my expense, because, you know, whatever you're sending out, that's one end that you can get popped. But like you buying supplies is just as dangerous. Right. So all you have to factor in all those things. And like, you know, if you can factor those things in and make sure that they have no overhead, even better, you know, because now you're more profitable.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
I would have my flash drive that I would always keep on me. And I kept it on me because first off, you have to figure I'm a moonshiner. So there's 170 proof alcohol around me at all times. Like it's possible for me at any time to, you know, take this flash drive out of my pocket, pour 170 proof alcohol on it and light it and hopefully melt it to a point where it can't be recovered.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
But really, obviously, that's not a guarantee. You know, it's not like I have thermite sitting around, even though that was an idea of mine at one point.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
I would do regular perimeter checks. So probably four a day, I would walk around. I would look through almost every window in the house and just kind of look at what was going on outside. Was there a car parked down the street? And there were times where I saw a car parked down the street. Yeah, there's a ton of stuff. I wouldn't have a cell phone.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
If you had a cell phone, you somehow knew me and I knew you well enough where I trusted you enough to come to my house. Your cell phone stays in the car.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
USPS only. Why? Because it's run by the federal government, which means they require a warrant to open it. If you ship DHL, UPS, FedEx, any of those or private companies, they can open your package at will. Whereas with USPS, they require a warrant.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And they need reasonable suspicion with probable cause in order to apply for that search warrant and have a federal judge sign off on their ability to even open that package.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Making a package safe to ship was actually it's kind of difficult because they try to make it as generic as possible so that they can classify almost any package as suspicious. So like if you use, quote unquote, too much tape. What's too much tape? Well, that's arbitrary. It's up to them.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So like if you use too much tape, if you have a fake return address, if you have a handwritten address, if it's not an official USPS box, right? Like all of these, you know, a fraudulent return address, a fake sender address, like all of these things culminate to create a suspicious package and then pairing them together
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
makes it so you can add up these individual variables to make it something where now you can say you have probable cause and plead that case to a federal judge and hopefully he'll grant you a warrant to open it up.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
I don't have time to ship packages. So, um, I had reached out to my cousin. So I contacted my cousin who at the time lived in Rhode Island and she worked at a dead end job. And I said, Hey, listen, like, um, you know, I got a plan. Do you want to come up for a weekend? Um, and I'll talk to you about it.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And she drove up that weekend and I told her, you know, cause I'm not, I'm not going to talk about selling drugs on the internet over the phone, you know? Um, I told her about it and I said, listen, like how it'll be is like, I will pay you a, you know, a certain percentage, 5% of whatever I'm shipping out, 5% of that profit margin for that package is yours. Plus a standard fee.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
We'll do like $5 a package plus the percentage plus gas money, all the expenses, car payments. And we had a spare bedroom. So she, if she wanted, she could live there. So she had very well, taken care of. Plus like, you know, unlimited alcohol, moonshine, weed, shrooms, ecstasy, acid, like basically whatever you want, you can take, you know? So that was kind of the arrangement that I had.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And then she would go and I would, in the morning, I would wake up, I would check my orders, I would print out addresses on thermal labels because thermal labels don't use microprinting, which means my IP address won't be on that label.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
For me, I bought a thermal printer because with a thermal printer, it doesn't use ink. It uses thermal paper and there's no micro printing with those. So in the morning I would wake up, I would print out, like let's say I'm sending you half a pound of weed. I print out your address and on the back of it, I write half a pound of weed. I package up a half a pound of weed.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
I have it sealed up in my clean room. I have my fake return addresses, slap it on there, and I slap destination address on that box, and I throw away the backside of the label, which says half a pound. One of the things my cousin was concerned about, she was like, if I'm sending out these packages and the FBI fingerprints them, they'll see my fingerprints. I was like, yeah, it's true.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
It's not false. It's true. And she was like, well, that's kind of an issue, right? I was like, no, because at the end of the day, if you're at the post office and you touch a box, you still have plausible deniability. Right now, if your fingerprints are inside one of those, you know, the plastic that seals the drugs or on the inside of the box. Not so much.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So for me, I would seal the package because I'm working with it on the inside of it. I would seal it and I would have like, you know, two or three pairs of latex gloves on. I bleached the area that I did it in on a regular basis to make sure there's no, you know, DNA. Like there's a ridiculous amount of stuff that kind of goes into this and then actually packaging it up.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So let's say I'm packaging up just an ounce of weed. I'm taking a sandwich bag. I'm putting the cannabis in there. I'm sealing it up, getting the air out as best I can. And then I'm taking that and I'm wiping it down with rubbing alcohol. with a new pair of gloves. I would stick it inside a vacuum seal bag. I would vacuum seal that bag.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And then I would dip that whole bag in a solution of rubbing alcohol, let it dry off. Then I would seal it in another bag. And then the last bag that I would seal it in would be what's called a visual barrier. And a visual barrier is just a It's a vacuum seal bag that's a solid color so you can't see through it.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So I would vacuum seal this last bag and off my thermal printer, I would print off a label that says organic dried fruit and I would slap it on that visual barrier. Now, if I hand this to you, you look at it and you squeeze it, it feels like dried fruit, but you can't see it because the visual barrier. So if law enforcement...
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
or a postal employee was curious about what was in a box and stepped on the box to look inside of it. Like, oh, it was an accident. We didn't, you know, we stepped on the box by accident. You can step on this box all day and that visual barrier is not gonna, it's a visual barrier. So you could literally open the box And what you're seeing is just this thing that says organic dried fruit.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
You have to open this box and cut through this two mil thick plastic in order to get the other plastic out. And even then, it's still so opaque that you can't see what it actually is. So you have to go through all these layers to see what it actually is. Now, the reason I would do that is because you have a thing called permeation.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So I can take a pound of weed, I can put it in a bag, I can stick it in a PVC pipe, and I can stick it in a block of concrete, stick that block of concrete in a gas tank. And if I leave it there for long enough, a drug sniffing dog will smell that smell of that cannabis through the metal of the gas tank, the gas in the tank, the concrete, the PVC pipe,
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
and the plastic bag because it permeates out, right? Because nothing in this world is actually solid. It's all held together by atoms, but nothing is technically solid, right? Even the inside of an atom is comprised of basically nothing, right? But empty space. So permeation goes through everything and anything. Some substances, it takes longer.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Now, mind you, I don't have to put it in concrete or steel or any of this crazy stuff that you see like A lot of the cartels do that, that are shipping large quantities because at the end of the day, I use two to three day shipping, you know, and it's sealed in four layers. So it doesn't have time to permeate those bags. in order for a dog to be able to smell it.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And I can assure you there's no microscopic residue on the outside of it because I've changed my gloves and I've killed whatever it is with rubbing alcohol and completely cleaned it multiple times on that same package. Okay, there's one more precaution to take around the shipping labels.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So every three packages would have a different return address because one of the alerts for law enforcement is a fraudulent return address. So I had to find a database of legitimate
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
return addresses and like you know me like if like you're an honest guy right like you're an honest citizen you're nine to five guy you don't break the law you're not you know you're not evil that i know you know like so like i didn't want to send out you know a bunch of coke with jack's return address Because if I did that, you know, it might not be the best thing.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Like Department of Homeland Security busts down your door at 6 a.m. You miss work or someone tells your boss about how they saw you getting raided. You lose your job. You know, what are you going to say? Oh, I didn't do it. Everyone says that. You know, and like the stigma, the trauma that your kids are going to have, like, you know, all that kind of stuff that goes hand in hand with it.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So like for me, I needed a list of people that I could find. And like my solution for that was looking at the sex offender registry and. finding level three sex offenders, the worst sex offenders, and putting their name as the return address.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And what this did was it made it so it was a legitimate address, a legitimate return address, where I could be pretty sure, not guaranteed, but reasonably sure that kids didn't live at. And that, you know, this guy got raided.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
I really didn't care, you know, because I have no sympathy for, you know, chomos, that's what they call them, federal prisoners, like child molesters or pedos, as they call them on, you know, the dark net and everywhere else. So, you know, I was like, at the end of the day, like,
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
You know, it was a great list to have because no matter where I'm shipping from in the country, there are sex offenders. And I didn't feel guilty about using them for my nefarious purposes, you know, because at one point they had used someone else for their nefarious purposes. You know, I just kind of saw it as karma.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Oh, no. So my name is Sam Bent. It's a matter of public record. Also, I'm also known as doing FedTime online and Killaby. That was my hacker alias for a while. And also 12189082, which, you know, it's almost like, you know, talking to Jean Valjean. But that's my Fed number. So, yeah, I got a couple of aliases.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Each post office, at a maximum, would have three packages going out. So, you know, if we were shipping nine packages that day, she would probably be visiting three or more post offices. So our maximum was three packages per post office. So she would go, she would, you know, ship out these packages from these three different post offices.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
She would get receipts and she would bring them back and I would cross off the name of that town. And then the next day I would pick a different county. Right. And that's how I rotated. But it's also how I ensured that I did not visit that same post office for at least six months.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Because I figured, you know, if the feds are going to the feds, let's say we ship out this package from this post office, the feds catch it. And they're like, well, we didn't get any video footage. Like, so we're going to set up shop. We're going to do surveillance. That's what they do. Right. We're going to set up surveillance at this location.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Have fun because we're not going to be back for six months. How big is your budget? You know, we're not we're not sending out, you know, five gallon buckets of fentanyl. In fact, like the most dangerous, the most harmful drug that I shipped, I think, was alcohol. Other people would say was powdered cocaine. I think I honestly I think alcohol is worse, you know, it's legal.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
But like I didn't sell heroin. I didn't sell meth. I didn't sell fentanyl. I tried not to sell drugs that I thought took people's souls. I tried to sell what I consider to be party drugs. And again, you know, that's that's you're just trying to rationalize your bad behavior. And you could absolutely say that I wouldn't contest it. I wouldn't say it's wrong. You know, that's what it is.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
But at the end of the day, like, for me, that was my moral line, you know, and I was proud of myself for even having one because there's a lot of guys that don't. Yeah.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Well, so that's the thing, right? Everyone's anonymous. You know, it's kind of like if I sell a knife on Amazon, how do I know you're over 18?
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
All of us have an inherent right to our own bodies. If you want to go eat McDonald's for the rest of your life and become 400 pounds and die of a heart attack, you're free to do so as an American. And I'm of the belief that if you want to do drugs, you should be free to do so. As an American, you have a right to put whatever you want in your body.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Unless someone else owns your body, no one has a right to tell you what to do with it. It's like me telling you, You can't wear your glasses over your eyes. You have to wear them on your forehead. Who am I? I have no right to your property. Who am I to tell you what to do? So that was kind of like my contention on that whole thing.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
For me, it was like no international shipments, no selling stuff that, you know, heroin, meth, fentanyl, things that kill people. And, you know, not ripping people off, giving them the best quality product that I could source. On a global scale.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
my only goal with this was to make like 200 grand. Cause like in Vermont, you could buy a house for a relatively cheap, like you can find a cheap house for like a hundred grand. So I was like, I buy a hundred thousand dollar house. And I have $100,000 left, which will let me pay the taxes and live off of it for long enough until I can find something to keep me afloat permanently.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Even if I had mentioned something to you federally, you are literally part of a conspiracy now and you can get up to 10 years. So I take it very seriously. Even like when I was incarcerated, I would have guys who would walk up to me and they'd be like, Oh, when I get out, I'm going to sell Coke right this time. I'd be like, listen, man, get the fuck away from me.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
But it was like between... my cousin's fee that I paid her and having to upgrade my cannabis setup and upgrade my alcohol and pay for shipping and you know, kind of evolve with the business. I always found myself always reinvesting. So like if I sold something, I made 800 bucks off of it. I would be like, all right, 400 bucks is going to be for shipping fees.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And the other 400 of that is going to be for gas money for my cousin to ship $400 worth of stuff, hopefully. So like, I made enough to make a profit, but like between my cousin and my ex, who I was still living with, I never got to that $200,000 line. Now I did get to a point where like towards the end, like your money starts to come in exponentially.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So like I said, the first week was like 300, second week was probably 500. And then like I had weeks where it was nothing. And then you have weeks where, you know, you got Bitcoin and guess what? Bitcoin dropped 20% in value. So now you got to hold that till it goes back up at least to that, at least 20%. And like, I'm not a millionaire. I don't have a lot of money.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's more dangerous than drinking and driving. Absolutely. What's the danger here? What happens is that complacency. So you get comfortable at a certain point with me, just like me and you might know each other for years in IRC, right? And then you get wasted one night and, you know, I call you by your handle and you say, oh, no, man, it's cool. Just call me Jack.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Right. And it's like, you know, in that situation, but on the dark net. Right. Where like I very well could be a Fed. Now I know something. I know an identifying piece of information about you. And maybe I've seen you say something a certain way that's unique to a certain area. Now I know what your first name is and around about where you are.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And as time goes on, there'll be more information leaks that I can capitalize on to figure it out. And that's why I said, to answer your question, that's why I said don't drink and type. Because whatever complacency you have is... exponentially increased, which means the chances of you basically being a data leak on yourself increases exponentially with that.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Super easy. Yeah, that's probably one of the easiest things to do. I think the simplest way to cash out is with drugs. and be like, what the hell? So it's super easy. Like, you know, here's the thing, right? Like around where I live, like a really good, good, good, good ounce of weed might run you like, you know, 225, 250. So on the dark net, like I can go and buy 30 bucks an ounce.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
You know, like what is wrong with you? Dumbass. You're guaranteed to come back. Yeah. It's like, I don't want to hear anything about any of that. So I absolutely understand that. That's great that you have that mindset of, you know, don't try to involve me in anything.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Like my cash out would be like, buy a bunch of his weed, And anyone that I knew in my area that I knew was like a social butterfly, you know, and I knew we keep their mouth shut. I would turn around and I would say, hey, man, listen, you know, I will sell you, you know, a pound of this weed for sixteen hundred bucks and I'll give it to you up front. Now, that's 100 bucks an ounce.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Again, the typical price in that area was 225, 250. This guy can turn around, sell ounces for 150, undercut everyone by almost 100 bucks. and make a good amount of money. And he didn't have to put up any money. And he would be able to do that and come back with that in like a week to two weeks. So I'm getting cash from all different sources.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
dispute resolution so basically when you would have a customer who would dispute a sale and you would have a vendor who would either agree or dispute it then i would i would manage some of the sometimes on some of those markets i would manage those disputes and i would be the one to decide like do you get a refund do you not get a refund do you get a percentage of a refund like how is that figured out and we would do that by looking at
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
You know, obviously the reputation of both the buyer and the seller. But we would also look at like the account age. We would look and see if like they had accounts on other darknet markets, how reputable they were.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
But he put it on Reddit. He didn't put the actual page. He didn't leak anything. He was responsible in his disclosure. And he contacted the admins. And he was like, hey, you guys have a IP leak. They just kind of gaslit him. And they're like, oh, yeah, we'll discuss it. Two weeks later, he's like, oh, it's a security issue. And they're like, yeah, all right.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
whatever, you know, and he like, he was posting about it on, on Reddit. So like, I'm trying to chill him out from posting about it on Reddit because I'm in charge of PR. I had went on as a representative and said, you know, yeah, uh, you know, that is our honey pot, you know, um,
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And we're glad that, you know, you were able to showcase that because now we can show people how strong our security is, that we also have offensive measures, you know, built in. And he was like, oh, that's not true. That's not true. We went back and forth and we argued, you know, for a long time.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
He had come up with the idea, like, oh, let's mirror and have this forum on the dark net. So worst case scenario, there's a fallback.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
He coded the site. He did all of that. And his job was to be a background admin. And my job coming on was to be an admin and actually do stuff myself. on the actual forum because I had a laundry list of credentials of sites that I had worked at before.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
No one ever comes to my house. You know, no one comes to my house. So, like, the only people that ever came to my house were people who knocked on the door and, like, try to sell paintings. Because, again, like, where I'm living, it's an affluent area, right? So, people would knock on the door, try to sell paintings. Or they'd knock on – like, Jehovah's Witnesses would come and knock on the door.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So – I got a knock on the door. So like it's like 7.15 in the morning. So like I just got my coffee. So I'm like I'm sipping my coffee. I walk to the door and like I open the door and there's this dude standing there. He's got a bulletproof vest. He's got a badge that's sewn into the bulletproof vest that I've never seen this badge before. and he's holding up a piece of paper.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
He's like, hi, my name is so-and-so. I'm a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security, and this is a federal search warrant. And, like, I'm sitting there, and I'm holding my coffee, and I'm looking back at the sky, and I'm looking at the 30 people that are behind the sky that have MP5s and ski masks with skulls on them on. And, like... Um, like this is before COVID.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
I'd had this exposure to cryptocurrencies and to the dark net in general for a long time because I had been in information technology and cybersecurity. I did a lot of residential work mainly, but that was always kind of my thing. I loved computers. I remember when Silk Road came out, like, I honestly, I thought it was a scam. You know, I thought it was a bunch of feds that ran it.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So seeing someone with a mask is, is weird. You know what I mean? Um, so like, I see all these people behind this guy and they're all looking through the windows and all this other nonsense. And I was like, oh, okay. I guess you want to come in then, huh? And he was like, yeah. I was like, all right. So as he starts walking in, I'm like, listen, there's, you know, there's two adult females.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
You know, one's my cousin and one's my ex. And then there are three children in the house because, like, I don't want them, you know.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
like to play like they're in iraq you know i don't want them running through you know pointing an mp5 at you know my sons or my daughter you know and like you know you know scaring the the out of them like i want them to know who's in there so they're not scared you know because if they're not scared they might be a little bit more relaxed when going through and they were and they were they were there there's a pretty courteous and calm and that was uh that was my first interaction
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Yeah, there's no lab. And it was like the room that I had like the cannabis in was separate from the main house. So that wasn't something that they were around.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Right, and that was in a clean room. Right, yeah. So they don't see any of that. And all the narcotics that I have were kept in a safe in there.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Yeah, so what they do is they raid, they go through, they find this. All right, so moving back a little bit, one thing that my cousin had been worried about was she was like, all right, let's say we do this and we get caught. I was like, listen, if we get caught, it's because I screwed up. I'm in charge of everything. I'm in charge of the security. I'm in charge of everything that goes on.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So if something doesn't go right, then it's my fault. So I was like, listen, if they come and they raid us, I'll tell them it was all me. Because at the end of the day, why am I not? If I don't, then they're going to put it on everyone. So when they came in, they searched and they're going through. And they come and they see me like, oh, any drugs in the house? I was like, yeah, they're upstairs.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
They're in my safe. They're all mine. I'm a darknet vendor. And they were like, what? And they were blown away. But like, again, I had an agreement with my cousin prior to this, that if this happened, this worst case scenario, we had a ton of contingency plans. That's part of having good operational security and having good information security policies.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
It's like, you know, do you have an incident response policy at your work? So didn't we. And this was agreed to prior to anything. So that was the thing. If we get raided, I admit everything was mine. And I did. I said, listen, I'm a darknet vendor. Everything's mine. They're like, what's the combination of the safe? Gave them the combo. What do I do? Say no, they're going to open it anyways.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So I go for my arraignment, right? So now I move out of the house I was in to a different apartment. So the Department of Homeland Security showed up on the day of my arraignment to that old house because they didn't know I moved. They wanted to arrest me there and bring me into court in handcuffs, but I didn't live there anymore. And the geniuses didn't know I didn't live there anymore.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And the rock stars they are, They had no clue where I was. So my ex had told them, oh, he moved, and this is the address. And by the time they got to this address, I was already halfway to the federal courthouse to go turn myself in to the U.S. Marshals for my arraignment.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
They said, listen, in the time that you were a vendor, so I think it was in total a year and a half or two years, they were like, in the short time that you were a vendor, you have... crawled into more crevices and learned more about this culture and seeped into this culture than we've been able to do in six years.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And like, it was just a big, you know, it was just like a big sting operation. And then as time went on and I learned a little bit more about it, you know, I realized it wasn't.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Because in my short period of time, I inserted myself into the community and ended up working with these markets and starting up Dread. And I had made myself an indispensable part of the community by contributing. and contributing in meaningful ways. And that's what made me valuable to the community at the end of the day. And...
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
You know, they said, hey, listen, like, you know, someone with your knowledge, like we could absolutely use that. And, you know, going forward, we'd like to bring you a laptop and, you know, you can continue taking orders and, you know, vending. You're not actually going to be sending drugs, but, you know, just gathering information. And I was like, man, I'm what? Yeah. Yeah, I'm good.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Remember, I had been to county before, right? I had been to state prison before. Nah, I'm set, man. I'm like, yo, are you kidding me? I work with cartels, dude. You know what I mean? I work with multiple cartels. You think I'm going to tell on people? No. I'm good. I have a family, man. You know what I mean? Like, I did this for my family.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Now you think I'm going to risk their lives to get out of whatever punishment's coming? You're delusional. I'd die for them. I'd kill for them. They're my family. You know what I mean? So...
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And like she didn't know, obviously, she didn't know anything about what I was doing because it would be, I just consider it to be a massive opsec risk, right, to tell her. So like I just told her that like I had a business and I wasn't specific about it. And like we learned a lot about each other as I was like doing my vending and she was completely unaware of it.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And like after I got raided, I lost all my electronics. So I like lost her number. I lost all her info. So I had to go like, you know, find it all. And my cousin was able to do it through her Facebook. And I remember contacting her and being like, she was like, oh, you haven't talked to me in four days. Is there an issue? And I was like, no, I got raided by the feds.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And it's like those Jews that break up with a woman and tell her that, like, oh, I'm a spy. You know what I mean? I was like, I got raided by Department of Homeland Security. They came in 30 deep in cooperation with the state police, like the Cyber Crimes Task Force came in. And she's like, yeah. all right, whatever, Sam. Like, listen, if you don't want to talk to me, like, you just tell me.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
I was like, I swear to God, I got raided by the Department of Homeland Security. You know, obviously, you know, she ended up learning that it was true that my phone did get taken. And then she ended up moving from where she was living up to up here with me. Because I told her, I was like, listen, I have this indictment. I was like, just forget about me. I'm probably going to do 20 years.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Because we wanted to get married. We had learned, we had fell in love by talking to each other. And we fell in love intellectually. I didn't know what she looked like. And I didn't think she knew what I looked like. We spent two years talking to her. I had hated, I wouldn't take a selfie because of my OPSEC. You know what I mean?
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So, so after I got raided, like I ended up talking to her, I sent her a selfie is now like, who's going to raid me now, you know? And she's like, Oh, like, I know, you know, I know you look like that. Cause like your cousin had showed me a picture of you. a while ago. I was like, are you kidding me? She sent me a picture of herself and she was way out of my league.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
She was like, dude, I'm like a three. She was an easy 10. I was like, what the hell? She was like, who cares? She was like, you're handsome. I was like, whatever. I'm not going to argue with you. I don't think so. I got imposter syndrome. So I'm like, no way. But, but she, you know, I was like, listen, I'm going to get 20 years. And she was like, I was like, you know, just forget about me.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
You know, we can be friends and stuff. And she was like, she was like, listen, it's not all about you. I was like, what? She was like, I love you. Like, I'm not, I don't, I don't care how long you get, you know? And that was, that was pretty incredible for me.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Um, but like, it was, I had, I had had people in the past who had better my life, who I said they would stick with me through, uh, a prison term and they didn't. And, uh, so like, I was very leery of it. And that's why I kind of like, just didn't want her to have to deal with that. I knew how much pain and agony it was going to be going forward. And, um, She did, man. It was crazy.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
She stuck with me through my everything, through my sentencing, through my actual prison incarceration, like everything.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Towards the end, like, I found this one vendor on the Darknet called Gold, G-O-L-D. And, um... What he would do is he would charge you five to 10% and you would send him your Bitcoin and he would send you cash in the mail. And I love that system.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Because we were arguing about peas. My daughter got excited. I had two stepdaughters and a son, and I had made them dinner. And when I had given them dinner... my ex was like, oh, you gave her too many peas. And I was like, I don't think so. And she was like, oh, well, you obviously did. Look at the plate. And I was like, well, it's the same amount of scoops. And she's like, you're an asshole.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
United States Attorney's big thing was you paid 10% to cash out your Bitcoin. And that shows criminal intent. And I was like, the one thing I said to my defense lawyer, I'm like, dude, you know, there are Bitcoin ATMs that charge 10%, right? Like, it's not like that makes no sense, you know?
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So what actually happened was my cousin got complacent. What she was doing is she would go to the post office with, you know, 12 packages. And remember what I said, three packages would have one return address on them. The next three would have a different return address from a different town. So she's going there with like our agreed upon number was three packages.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And now those three packages have the same return address. Now she's going to the post office with 12, 15, 20 packages. And remember, Every three packages has a different return address. So she's going there in some cases with six different return addresses. So they're like, what the hell is this? But again, that is not enough for a warrant.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
It's suspicious and it's reasonable suspicion, but it is not probable cause. So what ended up happening was the United States Postal Inspector just cut open a package with no warrant, cut open the visual barrier, cut open the three layers of vacuum sealed, and he found some Coke. And then they used that Coke.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
to apply for a federal search warrant for the house after they followed my cousin back to the house. So, like, for the longest time, I was angry at my cousin because I was like, you know, you didn't follow the security policy and now you're potentially costing me 200 years in prison because you were too lazy to drive.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Even though you billed for it, you were too lazy to do your job and drive to these different post offices. And I'm like, I came to the realization that at the end of the day, it's not her fault. It's my fault. I was in charge, right? That it was on me to supervise her. And I didn't do a good enough job doing that. And that's why we got raided.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
I'm a logician. My personality type is INTP, so I'm a logician. So I don't really get emotionally invested in it. So I was like, I disagree. I think you're wrong. It's the same amount of scoops. you know, the other kids got it. So it really aggravated her. And she basically told me, she was like, you know, I cheated on you seven years ago.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So even my OPSEC at the end of the day and my information security policies were so on point that I would have never had an issue with law enforcement.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Right. Right. And like, I had, so I'd gotten, in my discovery, I had gotten times where I looked through my discovery and the feds actually bought drugs off me. Like,
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
20 times they bought coke they bought lsd they bought cannabis um i think the only thing they didn't buy was moonshine but they bought pretty much everything um and like there was nothing from there's no fingerprints there's no hair not even microscopic dna like there's nothing um and you know at the end of the day again it was like that smallest little thing, you know, is what caused it.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And that was her complacency and my being overwhelmed, doing all these jobs, you know, having my attention so divided that I did not do a proper job in monitoring her and making sure that she was doing her job correctly. What ended up happening was my lawyer had applied for what's called the Franks hearing. A Franks hearing is when you can show law enforcement broke the law in order to catch you.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
This was my security policy from the start. It was like, if you guys are going to catch me, I'm going to make this maze so complicated that you're going to have to jump over a wall in order to do it. And then, of course, it's that whole thing you see on Law & Order, where it's like, oh, fruit of the poisonous tree. They broke the law in order to do this, so everything's invalidated.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And that was another part of my plan. That's why I was ready to admit to it so readily. I knew my rights. I knew I wasn't under any obligation to talk. I knew that I was better off asking for a lawyer. But I also knew that they would most likely have to break the law in order to bust me. And then if that's the case and I admit to everything and they get everything, everything's got.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
There's nothing else they can do. If everything from that arrest, from that original search warrant is thrown out, there's no case. Now, keep in mind, the feds have a conviction rate of 99%. They don't lose. It's like you playing chess with me and I tell you all my pawns are queens. I'm not going to lose. You know, so that's what it's like playing them. So now I got this Frank's hearing scheduled.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Now, that said, with this Frank's hearing scheduled, a Frank's hearing is very difficult to get. It's super, super hard to get. So the United States attorney, Drescher, contacts my lawyer and tells her, I don't want to go to this Frank's hearing. So like my lawyer contacts me. She's like, oh, he said he doesn't want to go to this Frank's hearing.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
I was like, yeah, I bet he doesn't want to go to this Frank's hearing. You know, like we're going to prove like everything that they did. First of all, everything you got was it was done so illegally. So I guess he told her he was like, listen, tell him that if he pleads guilty. I'll give him a maximum of 108 months, which is like nine years.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
She was a super miserable person for those seven years because her guilt aided her. And she would take that out on everyone else. And she would basically never be home. And when she was, she was just a nightmare to deal with. So when she ended up telling me that, I was like, awesome. Like, this is, you know, my chance to, you know, basically tell her to go to hell.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So if he doesn't, and we go to this Frank's hearing, he'll get nine of the 10 of his charges dropped, but he won't get his conspiracy charge dropped. And I was like, well, what's he mean? And she was like, oh, did you read your PSR? So PSR is a pre-sentence report. It's basically the background of your whole life. So I was like, no. So I went and I looked at it. It was like page 15.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And like on that page, it said Geneva's proffer. So when I had first gotten arraigned, after I got out, I got released on my own recognizance. After I got out, my lawyer had called me up and she was like, oh, do you want to come in and do a proffer? I was like, what's a proffer?
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And she was like, well, a proffer is like when you come in and you tell them what you did, who you worked for, who like who bought off you, who did what, what vendors that you worked with and what you know about them. I was like, yo, man, that sounds kind of like snitching to me. And she was like, well, we don't call it that. And I was like, well, the people I work with would.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
I'm like, nah, I'm not doing that. That's a death sentence for not just me, but my family. But aside from that, like, I'm just not on that kind of time. Like, I'm good. You know, I'm not going to put people in a box because I'm scared about being in a box. You know, like, I'm a man. So what I did, I'll accept responsibility for. So he's like, all right.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So like when they were like, oh, did you read your PSR? Go read page 15 or whatever. And I went back and I see Geneva's Prophet. Immediately, I know what a proffer is now. And I go through it and it says like, your cousin proffered on you. She confesses to all this stuff like, you know, oh, like he had me send these packages out. I didn't know what was in the packages.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And like, like you got a percentage of every, you know, everything that was in the package, you had a percentage of. You know, and like, like you helped me with the labels. Like, what? So it was just completely mind blowing.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And I used that opportunity to break up with her. But living in rural Vermont and doing these small computer jobs, I definitely didn't make a ton of money. It was my own company. It was called Worldwide Computer Consultants. It was a startup. I didn't have a ton of money. So I was like, well, I need to make money.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
If I want to move out and I want to have a good house for my children to live in, I need at least 200 grand.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Prior to living in Vermont, I had lived in Rhode Island. And prior to living in Rhode Island, I lived in Massachusetts. So like, you know, most people they move, you know, from these states for whatever reasons, economic reasons, job opportunities, right? So I was in Massachusetts. I caught my first case. It was assault and battery with intent to murder.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And when I lived in Rhode Island, I sold... It's been way over the statute of limitations at this point. But I sold coke, powder cocaine and weed and stuff. And I moved up to Vermont because I was tired of doing that kind of stuff. Because... Like, it's a rough life, you know? It's no joke. So I moved up to Vermont. When I moved up to Vermont, I got my high school diploma.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
From there, I continued on. And with my education, when I came up to Vermont, I couldn't turn a computer on. Like, if you were like, turn this computer on, I wouldn't be able to turn it on. I couldn't reformat one. I couldn't defrag a hard drive. I couldn't do anything. I didn't know anything about it. So I spent, you know, the next 10 years educating myself about computers and technology.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So like I had hopped on their site and I was on their site for a while and I started making posts. Like how I ended up establishing my name was just helping as many people as I could and calling out the people that I knew were scammers. So, you know, you had a ton of people obviously that are on that forum.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
or any darknet forums that are trying to get people to conduct transactions with them outside of the escrow system so you know someone's like oh like i'm looking for this vendor he had pound he had a pound of weed hypothetically he had a pound of weed for 1200 bucks
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
You'd see, you know, some shark come in and be like, oh, I like I have his weed and I bought it in bulk and I'll sell it to you for 600 bucks a pound. And like this guy is just a random person like you're never going to get anything. He's just he's there to rob you.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
He might even be a fed and he's just there to try to get your address, you know, and he'll rob you, too, you know, but he'll get your address, too. So, like, I used to call those people out. Like, if you said that to someone on the forum, you're like, oh, like, I can beat his price. And, like, you don't have that vendor star. Or, like, you can't prove that you're a legit vendor.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Like, you can't provide a signed PGP message saying you're vendor X, Y, and Z from this market. Then I'd be like, dude, like, you're a fucking fraud. You know? Like, you're trying to rip this dude off, you know? And, like... Like they used to hate that because I would call them out. And I made 5,000 posts in a month on Hansa. And that was how I established my name.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Hansa came out with a policy where they were like, listen, you can't post on our forums unless you're a buyer or a vendor.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So I was like, son of a bitch. So there was a there was a big Carter. He was like, listen, man, like, you know, I know like you like being on the forums. You do a lot of good. He was like, if like if you, you know, are you going to buy something that way you can stay on the forums? And I was like, well.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Like, I understand, you know, I understand Bitcoin and all that, but, like, I'm not completely sure yet that if I hop on, like, local Bitcoins, that I can buy Bitcoins and have it be completely anonymous. And for me, that's a major risk. To me, it was like, you know, it's not worth the cost of being able to post in the forums. So I was like, oh, it's a bad hit.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Like, I'm not going to be able to post in the forums. And he was like, no, man, like, I'll send you some Bitcoin and just, like, buy a... Technically, that was my first purchase on the dark net was a stolen credit card. So he had sent me the money for it. I had bought it off him as two happy times. And then once I bought it, I was now a buyer so I could talk on the forums.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
So I'm like, yeah, I solved that problem. You know, that's awesome. So I sent him like his stolen credit card number back. I was like, here, man, I don't need this. I'm not going to do anything with it. Like, I'm good, you know. So I was like, sweet. Now, you know, I can post on the forums, though. So I kept posting on the forums.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
And then, you know, about a month or so later, it was like I wanted to become a vendor. So I go to become a vendor and he was like, hey, listen, man, if you want to become a vendor, I'll front you that 200 bucks to do it because I know you don't want to go buy Bitcoin and And, you know, you call me paranoid about it. I was like, yeah, all right. Like, that's awesome.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
You know, I appreciate you, you know, like sticking your neck out. Like, it's 200 bucks and he probably makes that in an hour.
Darknet Diaries
132: Sam the Vendor
Yeah, so it was moonshine and cannabis. But where were you getting the cannabis? I was growing it. Yep. So I had imported seeds from the EU. I had gotten some Master Kush seeds and I refined them. And I'd studied. So I had studied botany for probably about 15 years.