Speaking To Russia's Cyber Narcos
CrashOut offers crazy exclusive insight on the Russian web mafia
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Russian “Cyber Narcos” are estimated to control an incredible 95 percent of the $1.4 billion in online drug sales. CrashOut’s favorite Nabokov of narco-journalism, Niko Vorobyov, has the scoop, speaking to online Russian drug and gun dealers like “Sauron.” Niko really excels here with the best breakdown anywhere on the new Russian mobsters and how it gets entwined with the war in Ukraine. Will Mexican cartels want a piece? IG
By Niko Vorobyov
On an April afternoon last year, in the woods next to the town of Shchyolkovo, a short drive northeast of Moscow, a pair of cops were on a stakeout. Two shaven-headed men approached to pick up a stash of mephedrone, a pungent crystalline powder that’s become Russia’s favorite party drug. When the officers moved in, one of the men whipped out a pistol and opened fire, killing a policeman and wounding his partner before pulling a swift getaway on a motorbike. The suspect, 34-year-old Vasily Buryakov, was apprehended four days later in the region of Tver.
À bout de souffle, Russian-style.
Cop killings and gangland shootouts were common in Russia back in the wild nineties, during the chaotic transition from communism when racketeering gangs – the so-called “Russian mafia” – fought over the freewheeling economy. But while the vory-v-zakone of Russia’s traditional underworld gradually fade into insignificance, a new type of crime syndicate is increasingly making its presence felt - cyber narcos. They long expanded online, but as last year’s shooting shows, they also pack power IRL, or “in real life.”
The way their drug selling works is this. After perusing a menu of uppers, downers, laughers and weepers to suit every occasion, you place an order using cryptocurrency. In the West, such as through the famous Silk Road, it would arrive straight to your house. In Russia, the postal system doesn’t quite work that way: dropping by the post office to sign for a batch of disco biscuits is only for the utterly reckless. So instead, there’s a series of dead drops known as “treasures” or klad, in out-of-the-way places, like a park or a forest. If you’re in a big city like Moscow, it’s usually by your nearest metro station.
Online drug dealing is hardly exclusive to Russia, of course. One of President Donald Trump’s first executive actions when he got back in power this year was to release Ross Ulbricht, the mastermind behind Silk Road. But in Russia, the dark web absolutely dominates: crypto intel firm TRM Labs estimates that Russian-language sites accounted for 95 percent of all illicit online drug sales, worth $1.4 billion in 2023 alone. However, some recent busts indicate such websites in the West could also be getting bigger..
A drugs-and-arms baron who goes by the online moniker Sauron spoke to me quite candidly last year – perhaps because he’s already a fugitive hiding somewhere in Central Europe and feels he has nothing to lose. He’s a young man, barely in his twenties, but already commands a cybercrime empire throughout Russia with hundreds of crooks on his payroll.
Sauron gave me a fascinating and detailed breakdown of his operation saying:
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