OPSEC Lessons from Xanax King

A lot of what went down with Xanax King is still sealed, but there are lots of little bits of information that have been given to the media. Reading all of the stories we can start to put together what happen.

  1. Someone notices large scale distribution of "fake" Xanax on Agora, orders of 10,000+ pills are common. Notice XK is a big vendor.
  2. LE make a number of controlled buys and work out that the vendor uses the same packaging and same drop point.
  3. LE tour postal offices across the country with a full profile of packaging and teach workers how to pick out XK packages.
  4. Packs go missing as postal workers start pulling them out of the lines. Correlates with complains of non-arrivals on the forums.
  5. With the combination of controlled buys and orders being pulled off the line at sorting centers LE together with USPS quickly triangulate the drop location.
  6. Stake out drop location, wait for the guy who visits every day and drops off the same 20+ packages a day.
  7. Follow him, build evidence, grand jury, arrest.

Lessons:

  1. CHANGE UP your packaging frequently.

  2. If packages go missing CHANGE UP again

  3. Use different mailboxes to ship from, use different people, don't have one person carry all the packages the same day at the same time

From now on user vendor reviews should include, and this is important:

  1. Make more than one order from the vendor. If the packaging was the same on all then you avoid them because they will be caught.

  2. Make more than one order from the vendor. If the send location was the same on all then avoid using the vendor because they will be caught.

I think this is a turning point arrest in that previously we would judge vendors based on a single order and their 'stealth' and 'delivery' where now that simply isn't good enough.

Vendors who don't vary their packaging and send from the same area are endangering themselves and their customers.


Comments


[24 Points] badgrl2:

vendors should nuke their accounts once they start getting big enough to draw this type of attention. sucks to have to start out using escrow and sending out some samples again to get a rep again, but it's peanuts compared to having a special task force coming after you.


[5 Points] None:

Agree with this 100%. In the end it's package profiling that gets every vendor caught. You need to change up packaging constantly.


[3 Points] dopelessfopefiend:

IMO this was all pfizers op


[5 Points] 666fun:

3 wouldnt' happen. They wouldn't have tour the country explaining to each post office what XK's packages look like, they just need to show the couple post offices that are doing the intitial processing of his mail. They can determine that fairly easily.

But beside that, i think we need to wait to read the complaint to make any final determinations as to what he did wrong.


[3 Points] None:

I'd go as far to say that this isn't all DNM based. You don't produce the amount of pills XK was making and selling without being known in the drug world. That's a lot of material. I'll take a guess and say he was selling large amounts on the streets as well as on the DNM's. They were probably just watching him and noticed he was using Tor or something through his IP, and once he was busted they just opened his computer and went from there.

What ever gave anyone the idea that vendors only deal on darknets and not in their hometowns as well. Customers are customers.


[2 Points] sharpshooter789:

Any chance you got ahold of the indictment?


[2 Points] LongLiveThe_King:

Isn't this the same thing that happened to that heroin vendor a little while back?


[2 Points] ciphersexual:

Where is the info that XK was found by following the trail back from drop locations? I must have missed that article.


[1 Points] Oneand1:

Great post: switch up, guys, don't get complacent, this isn't a game just because a part of it has moved onto a different corner of the Internet.

Make more than one order from the vendor. If the send location was the same on all then avoid using the vendor because they will be caught.

Excellent advice for the buyer. That's how they used to bust Indian pharmacies back in the day.


[1 Points] Dick_In_Yo_Mouth:

XK also packaged his bars the same all the time.


[1 Points] mikehussy001:

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