Canadian authorities say they have shut down one of the country’s largest known dark web drug operations. This was the end of a multi-agency investigation that spanned from Vancouver to the Greater Toronto Area and used postal and financial data to map the network.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Central Region said in a statement on Thursday that they had shut down a vendor known online as RoadRunna, who allegedly used encrypted marketplaces to sell cocaine, methamphetamine, MDMA, heroin, ketamine, and thousands of pills.
This month, police used search warrants to find about 75 kilogrammes of different drugs, 10,000 tablets, electronics, and packaging materials with the RoadRunna name on them.
The RCMP said that seven men from Ontario were arrested and charged with a number of trafficking and conspiracy crimes. The force talked about a shipping business that moved about 400 packages a week to customers all over Canada.
According to the Mounties, the case started when German authorities shut down a dark-web marketplace and sent information about Canadian users to the police.
The file started with the RCMP’s cybercrime unit in Vancouver and then went to the Serious and Organised Crime team in Milton, Ontario.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) worked with Canada Post Security, Europol’s Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce, and FINTRAC, Canada’s financial intelligence agency, to look through marketplace data and transaction patterns that allegedly pointed to the vendor and its support network.
RCMP Insp. Nicole Noonan said in a press release, “The collaboration was decisive.” She also said that police will keep up the pressure on drug dealers on the dark web.
The police said that the takedown was a sign that encrypted platforms are not safe from investigators, especially when used with postal screening and financial intelligence methods.
The RCMP didn’t go into detail about payment rails in this case, but dark web commerce usually uses crypto wallets and privacy tools to hide flows.
The fact that FINTRAC was involved suggests that the team also looked for fiat on and off ramps, such as exchanges, payment processors, and bank accounts that might have received money from sales.
Packaging hundreds of packages a week means that you have to buy postage over and over again and keep good relationships with your drug suppliers.
Canada Post Security’s job shows how important postal systems have become for the dark web drug trade and how data from labels, return addresses, and shipping patterns can help identify activity even when storefronts and usernames disappear after a marketplace is shut down.
As law enforcement combines cyber, postal, and money-laundering intelligence, financial intermediaries are becoming more vulnerable to compliance issues.
Companies that process payments, banks, and cryptocurrency platforms that have Canadian clients should be ready for more production orders, tougher due diligence requests, and possibly account freezes because of dark web investigations.
Traffickers use the mail because it’s easy for them, which puts postal and logistics companies at risk of losing business and their good name.
More targeted screening and data sharing can lead to higher costs per package and lower service levels, especially in cities where there are a lot of packages.
Vendors that sell tools for verifying addresses, finding fraud, and keeping track of the chain of custody may do well as regulators push carriers to make their networks more secure.
