Speedsweden
A Silk Road case
A watchful colleague notices how two men are doing suspicious things to a utility trailer along the E20 just south of Alingsås. That is the unlikely beginning of a serious drug charge of many thousands of drug sales over the internet.
One man's loss, another man's gain
A police car quickly arrived at the scene when Per (who soon became the suspect of the crime investigation) tried in vain to rid himself of a bag of about 60 pills scheduled as illegal narcotics. The two men were promptly arrested.
After a closer inspection it became clear that the utility trailer had been rented by Per, and that the two men were only trying to repair it. However, it was decided that a police raid of Per's home would have to be performed, due to the pills Per had tried to rid himself of in front of the police.
Per was registered as a resident of Malmö, but his home turned out to be a rental apartment in Alingsås. The writer [sic] and another drug investigator from the Alingsås police went to the residence.
The apartment
As we open the door to the apartment on the third story of the apartment building, we are immediately greeted by the flowery smell characteristic of amphetamine. Right next to door we find bags of padded envelopes with addresses on them, ready to be mailed. After making sure the apartment is empty we enter the kitchen, where the smell is the strongest. On the cutting board in the kitchen is nearly half a kilogram of amphetamine and a knife for separating it. Close to it there's a bowl of a few hundred ecstasy pills and in another bowl plant parts to make spice. On the kitchen table there's material to vacuum seal the narcotics. Another half a kilogram of amphetamine is also found in the apartment, along with hundreds of ecstasy pills found in the 34 padded envelopes in the hallway.
Speedsweden
In the beginning the investigators were confused as to how the seller and the customers were communicating, as they couldn't find communication-related in the apartment, and phone records showed no signs of communication either. The solution turned out to lay within one of the computers seized during the raid. Through an IT forensics analysis an alias, Speedsweden, and a screen dump from a site called Silk Road turned up. The writer [sic] happens to have many years of expertise of IT before I [sic] became a cop, and hence I was able to surmise what it was about, and through the TOR browser I soon discovered Speedsweden's Silk Road page.
Padded envelopes with addresses were found behind the door.
In the envelopes were DVD cases, and powder in small bags.
On a dirty cutting board in the kitchen the amphetamine is separated
Equipment to vacuum seal the drugs
In total there were 1222 commnents from buyers. Next to every comment there was a description detailing what substance had been bought. The absolute majority of all comments were written in Swedish, and most had bought a few grams of amphetamine or a few ecstasy pills. The majority of the 34 buyers that were discovered through the padded envelopes were not previously known for drug-related crimes.
As per usual in our line of business, the reality is seldom very flattering. When reading through Speedsweden's page on Silk Road, and his feedback, one gets the impression of a serious business that cares a lot about the integrity of its customers. When you later found yourself in his kitchen, which stinks of old trash, where the amphetamine is separated with a dirty old knife on a dirty cutting board by someone who himself has signed his name on the shipment, the picture changes. That people get infections and become gravely ill when they inject narcotics that is handled in this way is hardly a surprise. Even the court write in their verdict that Per has shown amateurishness in his business.
The trucker who became a dealer
Pers path to becoming one of Sweden's biggest internet vendor of amphetamine and ecstasy started with alcohol problems, a situation that led Per to start a 12-step program. At the program Per met a person we can call Lukas. Per and Lukas soon found each other and started drinking together. Lukas had a history of amphetamine use, and soon both Per and Lukas were doing amphetamine.
If it was Per or Lukas who came up with the idea to sell drugs on Silk Road we haven't been able to figure out. We who have been involved in the investigation have our suspicions that Lukas has been involved in the whole thing as well, as Lukas possesses a higher technical competence than Per. Of course, Lukas vehemently denies this. It was also not possible to prove any involvement on Lukas' part and he ended up not standing accused in trial. Related to the matter is the fact that all the transactions from bitcoin companies went to Pers, and not Lukas' bank account. Speedsweden was registered in the spring of 2013 on Silk Road and only a few months later, Per was in the middle of sending out his third kilo of bought amphetamine when he was arrested.
5 years imprisonment
Per was sentenced to 5 years in jail for a high-degree drug offense by the Alingsås court. He was sentenced for both possession and transactions of multiple scheduled substances. In total 500 sales were documented on Silk Road, out of a total of 1222 comments from buyers. There was also big big deposits from bitcoin companies on Per's bank account with transfers of as much as 70 000 SEK that Per could not explain. The court therefor decided to extract 200 000 SEK from Per as profit from the crime.
~ Niklas Lindroth The Narcotics Group, Alingsås
Sources:
Case B1025-13 Alingsås tingsrätt
FUP 1400-K105990-13
Photographs: Niklas Lindroth