Silk Road forums
Market => Rumor mill => Topic started by: Mister-E on June 05, 2012, 07:09 am
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So I am posting with a newb account on purpose for various reasons I don't want to go into. Flamers and naysayers suck it in advance. Everything I'm about to spit it the truth, or from a credible source.
I'm worried about Pharmville, or more specifically Alex and Ben (anybody who didn't know those are pseudonyms, dude, really?) or I have come to learn that Alex was also Joe to some. Anyhow, I'm concerned for their safety or their freedom. You might say "who cares, they were here for a while and now their gone" but any big time player leaving the Silk Road game for any reason should cause other vendors to react in a genuine "what is the real reason this is happening?" attitude and try to learn or figure out what is going on. We need to act as a community and seller have to have each others backs if this is to last for a while. And the Road has descended so far; I used to make 3 - 4 orders a week, now I hardly order. Prices are out of control and even the sellers who have been here since I joined are jumping ship ripping people off.
Pharmville's departure, in my opinion, was not a planned thing. They may have originally decided to take a break after returning for a week after "Ben's" family trouble, but something happened since then. I believe the explanation that they needed to step back and analyze every aspect of their business from a security standpoint, which would have been impossible to do while staying in business.
I was one of the first to order from them during their one week back after "Ben's" hiatus. I actually made 2 orders that week: one the first day back and one a few days later. I received both orders, though the second took a few days longer, but "Alex" came on the forums and let everyone know that he was packing up the last of the orders and a few might be delayed. I never once felt nervous, I had received so many packages from PV up until that point I had faith in them like I have faith the sun will rise every morning. I got every single product I ordered and I'm not talking small orders. The two orders totaled over $1000 easy. I regulary made $600 - $900 orders with PV without ever an issue. I also had PM discussions with "Alex" literally in the days leading up to their sudden "disappearance" about collaborating with Pharmville in order to lighten their load and work with them on some other projects, which I don't want to elaborate on because I don't want the wrong people to learn a significant part of Pharmville's way of doing business.
Anyhow, at the time, I had every reason to believe that Pharmville would be back like they explained they would. I think everyone would collectively agree that that is highly unlikely at this point. Here are my questions and what I know:
I hope that they just decided to quit while they were ahead. They were moving a serious amount of product. No doubt that if LE was looking at any vendors on SR, they were looking hard at PV. I hope they just felt the heat and decided to cease all communications with their vendors and customers, not log in to SR (although someone logged in with their account at least 3 times since their listings were all pulled.) I find it strange that they didn't even change their home page one bit, like they were just going to pick back up and resume business at some point. It would be so easy to just add a bulletin at the top of their page if they were having problems or planning on not resuming. So I think one possibility is they somehow felt the LE heat moving in and decided to drop everything, sit on their inventory, lay low (and stay high) for the rest of their lives and stay free, hopefully.
There is some evidence that they either got on LE radar, were ratted out, or got spooked that LE was on to them or they had leaked too much personal information to too many people and therefore it was too risky to go on. I actually tracked down the supplier of their awesome Percocets, which Alex had told me in a PM were from Asia (being vague on purpose.) Before I ever mentioned Alex, Ben, or Pharmville, he knew who I used to do business with (that is all I told him) and knew Alex sometimes used a pseudonym of "Joe." He was concerned about them because he has not heard from them since some time in late March, around the time they shut down. His biggest concern was that they had paid for a substantial amount of pills but the supplier was unable to ship them because he could not get a response from either of them as where to ship the product. He also claimed to be the supplier of the fentanyl powder they were going to start selling when they came back, but he said it ended up not being as pure as they first thought, so it would be a waste to sell. They needed an experienced chemist to mix the fentanyl it they were going to sell it, and before they discovered the purity issue, Ben was going to meet up with a chemist who was reportedly "very" excited to enter in to a partnership with PV on that project. Ben expressed reservations about meeting this chemist, but seemed to be a very driven guy and was determined to add the fentanyl and other products to their lineup, so he had agreed to meet this guy FTF. LE setup?
I am convinced that the person I believe to be the supplier of PV's Percs is the person I have been communicating with because he knew WAY too much about Alex and Ben, Pharmville and their plans for the future. He was concerned for their safety / freedom as well so he asked me to have them get ahold of him ASAP if I heard from them.
Another suggestion that he mentioned, that I think is a little less likely, but still has merit, it that some of the other sellers on SR put pressure on them (perhaps with threats of violence) to bow out so they could make more money on SR. PV had very good prices on excellent products IMHO and ever since they left prices and selection are out of control.
Anyway, I was getting Alex to kind of mentor me there right before they went dark, so it sucks. I will have to learn on my own and do a lot of research. If I knew half of what they knew about importing drugs into the US, I would be a rich, rich man. Plus I got really fond of their Percs, their white and blue Roches, and their old school OCs. And the dex tabs they had a few of.
Anyway, anybody with any other credible info please chime up here. It seems to me that LE hasn't figured out how to shutter the site yet, so they are going after the big time sellers to make the place so shitty that it becomes irrelevant. None of us want that to happen.
"Peace, pot, microdot. Smoke a lot and don't get caught."
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Interesting info. I remember first coming to the site in December and seeing there listings, and them being the main catalyst in me getting involved with SR. Hated to see them leave, because I hadn't even had a chance to do business with them.
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I just came across thread by searching for Pharmville to see if there was any news.
I too was in discussions with Alex concerning a collaborative effort after their return from a hiatus due to Ben's loss. But discussion ceased mid stream and I never heard back from them.
I agree that the opiate market is not the same anymore. Though every now and again you can find a good deal at reasonable prices. But there's no steady supply.
I hope all is well with them. But I have to agree, I don't think they will return.