The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime brings you stories and investigations from the global criminal underworld. The topics covered by Deep Dive are far ranging, one episode could be looking at a hybrid paramilitary organized criminal cartel; the next could be the dismantling of an encrypted communications network; or the use of complex corporate structures to hide illicit activity; or the role organized crime has in the recycling industry. This podcast series demonstrates the wide ranging investigations and research carried out by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
If you were to walk around a Russian city, you might not realise it but hundreds of small packages of drugs, could be just below the surface, buried in the ground, or maybe attached to the back of a nearby drainpipe with magnets, or hidden inside a hole in a wall. These little "treasures" have been ordered online from a vendor operating on a darknet platform and then hidden by couriers known as 'Kladmen' all over the place waiting to be collected - this is the "dead drop" method.
The darknet markets servicing Russia have revolutionized the illicit drug markets in the country, which has seen an explosion in the consumption of synthetic drugs like methadone, mephedrone or Alpha-PVP. The vendors run a network of chemists, wholesalers, and Kladmen.
Sportsman, hired thugs, roam around looking for Seagulls people who steal dead drops and punishing Kladmen on behalf of vendors, before uploading the punishments to social media as a warning to others. But in , it was taken down and like the mythical beast it was named after, new heads sprouted in its place - OMG!
The DNMs, with connections to the precursor markets of China and India, operate on TOR, have pushed synthetic drugs into all corners of Russia, democratizing the production process, with how-to guides and readily available lab equipment, and even created an apprenticeship scheme for prospective Kladmen, with a guaranteed job at the end. The whole process is highly anonymised from production to transportation, and from purchase to delivery through the dead drop method.
