Junkies spend £244m on cocaine on the dark web while major dealers make £80m a year

Britain is now Europe’s biggest market for secret online cocaine trafficking, chilling new figures reveal.

The country also accounts for a THIRD of the £733m worth of the drug sold each year worldwide on the dark web.

And the National Crime Agency estimates that a large part of the UK’s £244m cocaine industry, which takes place in the sinister internet underworld, is bought by users here.

More and more tech-savvy kids and teens are drawn to the world of the dark web because it offers them a “Harry Potter-style cloak of invisibility” in their quest for drugs.

This week, the NCA confirmed that there were “more customers for cocaine in the UK, so more is being supplied”.

And Britain’s biggest traffickers can rake in up to £80m a year, shipping cocaine to buyers Amazon-style, with same-day delivery from dark web shopping sites hidden from internet users.

They even do mail delivery. Our researchers logged into the shady underbelly of the internet and found dozens of high-end pure cocaine listings, with just a few mouse clicks.

One listing offered high-potency Peruvian “fish scales” at £73 per gram. Another UK dealer called Billy Bobs House boasts of selling “high purity cocaine (for snorting only)”, which Royal Mail can ship for just £50.

And another, using the UK County Lines moniker, is trading 1 gram of 90% pure “uncut cocaine” for £70. The seller will ship anywhere in the UK, adding: “Every effort is made when packaging the product to avoid detection.

“First it goes into the baggie, then it goes into a mylar bag which is then put on a card and then an envelope. Finally it is placed in a quilted jiffy.”

Elsewhere, a seller using the name Escobars Mums Cocaine, a reference to Colombian cocaine crime lord Pablo Escobar, is offering 6g of cocaine for £286.

They write: “Buy five get the sixth free! Here you have a superior batch of clean cocaine product as seen in the photo.” Stating that it gives a “genuine euphoric high,” they add: “This is for real cocaine users only.”

Payment is made through online cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Monero, Etherium, and Litecoin. They can be purchased through exchange sites using payment services such as PayPal.

Drug sites even post customer reviews giving their opinion on “stealth”, “communication” and “quality” with comments like “the coke is smooth” and “easy to smell and good high”.

One user told us that this market took the risks out of alley drug deliveries. “You don’t have to go to shady meetings and risk being beaten up by a smuggler: Royal Mail delivers it to your door.

“I have been using the dark web for years. It’s safer and makes it easier to access the medications I want.” But Nuno Albuquerque, lead treatment consultant at the UK Addiction Treatment Group (UKAT), warned: “There has been a boom in the use of the dark web during the lockdown. People buy it because they think it is safer. But no one knows what happens to the drug in transit, who handles it.”

UKAT told us that there had been a boom in young people seeking help after being lured to the dark web to buy drugs.

Last July alone, the group received 103 online chat and callback requests from children and young adults under the age of 25 struggling with dark web drug dependency. The youngest was just 13 years old.

For the entire past year, UKAT had no requests for help related to addicted children via the dark web.

Data from Public Health England now shows drug deaths are at an all-time high across the country, especially in so-called Generation X, born between the mid-1960s and 1980s.

Mr. Albuquerque added: “We are extremely concerned about the increase in these cries for help on the dark web. Being able to order drugs the same way you would order pizza online is scary but extremely appealing to a younger generation that wants to stay ‘under the radar’.

“The dark web offers a Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak to buying drugs and its appeal to the younger generation is clear. Drugs bought by any means are risky, you will never know exactly what you are getting. Every time you use them, you risk your life because the ingredients will never appear on the list.”

The dark web is only a small part of the £132bn annual drug trade in Europe and North America. But the UK is cornering the dark web market according to Dr. Monica Barratt, a social scientist involved in conducting the world’s largest survey of drug use.

She said: “If you live in London, you can order from the darknet at 3pm as many vendors will deliver later that night. I think the immediacy changes the appeal.”

Britain is in the grip of a cocaine boom. A study by King’s College London suggests that Bristol is the city with the highest rate of consumption per person in Europe, while Londoners consume the most, at 23kg per day.

A third of UK users can receive cocaine in half an hour, faster than a takeaway pizza, says the Global Drug Survey.

Meanwhile, drug sales on the dark web have increased 500% during the pandemic, says a report by cyber intelligence firm Sixgill. Cocaine lists alone have skyrocketed by 1,000%, from 140 in December 2019 to 1,541 on April 27 of last year. The National Crime Agency has a specialized unit for drug trafficking on the dark web.

A spokesperson said: “The structure of the darknet supply network is that there will be some UK suppliers who ‘only’ supply here and some who will risk international supply with distributors in the UK and across Europe.

“Earnings vary by network size, but can run into the millions for the most prolific distributors.

Thomas White, 26, a darknet drug dealer and college dropout, is estimated to have made £1.6m selling drugs from his Silk Road 2.0 site before he was caught.

He was given five years and four months in 2019 after police raided his luxury apartment in Liverpool and also found indecent images of children on his laptop. She admitted drug trafficking, money laundering, and making indecent images.

Last April, the NCA dismantled a drug ring that was shipping ecstasy around the world. The operation began after MDMA Class A packets destined for Europe, Asia and the US were intercepted.

Officers analyzed the encrypted messages to identify people involved in drug sales and money laundering using cryptocurrencies.

The agency said 90kg of MDMA, 134kg of amphetamine and more than 6,000 diazepam/alprazolam tablets were recovered during the investigation, with a combined street value of £4.3m.

Last October, the NCA revealed that 24 people were arrested in the UK in one of the largest international operations targeting a dark web criminal market. Officers seized £220,000 in suspected criminal cash and Bitcoin, and more than 50 kilos of cocaine, MDMA, cannabis, methamphetamine and ketamine after German authorities arrested the suspected market operator.

This week the NCA revealed its 12 most wanted fugitives, including Jack Mayle, 30, from Croydon, south London, wanted on suspicion of supplying class A drug MDMA and other drugs. He allegedly worked with a dark web drug dealer and is known to carry weapons.

On drugs in the mail, a Royal Mail spokesman said: “We work closely with the police for domestic mail and with the Frontier Force for international mail. They help us stop the transportation and delivery of illegal drugs ordered on the dark web.

“We also encourage our letter carriers to report any suspicious items to their managers.”

What is the dark web?

The internet is made up of three different layers: the surface web, the deep web, and the dark web.

The surface web shows all the sites we can find on the likes of Google. The deep web are pages that search engines cannot access and are accessed using passwords and authorization, such as work intranets.

The dark web is a network of uncrawlable websites that search engines can’t find and that require specific software to access them. That is why it is a favorite among criminals and terrorists.

App stealers selling guns

By Jack Clover

Machine guns, shotguns, pistols and knives are now available at the click of a mouse.

Criminals are using the controversial Telegram encrypted messaging app to advertise deadly weapons. Users can set up “channels” that protect their own identity but allow them to post messages that reach thousands of people.

A channel called Buy Guns in the UK was active for over two months and had 9,000 followers before it was shut down. UK Guns and Ammo is offering a Glock 19 pistol for £500, an Uzi submachine gun for £650 and an AK47 for £1,000.

Prices are only displayed in private messages and sales are made using cryptocurrencies that are difficult to trace.

Telegram has been criticized for harboring far-right extremists and even terrorists like ISIS. Criminal penalties for tech bosses who fail to crack down on extremists will be included in a new online safety bill.

Par ran £3.7m racket as an online store

Two dark web merchants were so busy they had a computer program taking orders while raising millions.

Jehanzeb Amar and Salahydin Warsame, both 29, ran a social networking site called LetsWork, which shipped cocaine, ecstasy and LSD to more than 1,000 subscribers. They were caught after police pounced on Warsame’s van near a post office in Birmingham and found 61 packages of drugs ready to be mailed to addresses across the UK.

The analysis identified that LetsWork had received £3.7 million through the couple’s cryptocurrency accounts. Amar was given 13 1/2 years and Warsame 10 1/2 at Birmingham Crown Court last April.