Man found hanged was ‘dark web’ mastermind
A Canadian man found hanged in a Thai police station was the founder of the world’s largest ‘‘dark web’’ drugs market, according to an analysis by The Times.
Alexandre Cazes, 26, was discovered dead on Thursday in the bathroom of his cell in Bangkok, having apparently taken his own life.
He had been held there since his arrest last week on a United States extradition warrant, and had been due to attend a deportation hearing later that day.
An analysis of posts written by Cazes on internet forums suggests that he was a notorious cybercriminal known as ‘‘alpha02’’, the anonymous founder of the criminal marketplace AlphaBay. He lived in luxury in Thailand, claiming to have made his money through investments.
Alphabay went offline on July 5, the day Cazes was arrested.
The site connected more than 200,000 people around the world, trading illegal drugs, weapons and stolen financial details. Trades on AlphaBay are estimated to have been worth as much as US$800,000 a day. Sellers were paid in the untraceable currency Bitcoin.
A Wall Street Journal report referred to Cazes as ‘‘one of the site’s operators’’.
Thai police have seized four Lamborghini cars and three houses from his estate. Cazes’s family home in Quebec was also raided last week, apparently in a joint operation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the FBI, as part of an investigation believed to be into a global network of arms and drug sales on the dark web – although his family is not believed to be aware of his activities.
The Times also linked Cazes to posts on a forum for ‘‘pickup artists’’ – men who exchange tips and tricks about how to seduce women – under the username alex3948.
He appears to have lived in Thailand for about six years, and to have married a Thai woman. In a post in March, he described himself as an ‘‘expecting father’’.
Cazes boasted on the forum about his wealth. In posts last year, he discussed trading in Bitcoin.
He also mentioned hiding his online identity using a service provided by Mullvad, a small Swedish company, noting that the company owned its own data centre and did not keep logs on users.
In separate posts on the dark web marketplace Evolution two years ago, alpha02 also recommended Mullvad, using almost identical wording.
According to former users of AlphaBay, alpha02 mentioned being French Canadian on a forum dedicated to credit card fraud. The analysis by The Times found tics in alpha02’s online correspondence suggesting that his native language was French.
In a 2015 interview with dark web news site Deep Dot Web, alpha02 was asked if he was ‘‘afraid of getting busted’’. He replied: ‘‘I am not. I am absolutely certain that my opsec [operational security] is secure, and I live in an offshore country where I am safe.’’
AlphaBay was launched in 2014. It was designed to resemble eBay but with categories such as ‘‘opiates’’ and ‘‘firearms’’ rather than ‘‘electronics’’ or ‘‘antiques’’.
A study by Rand Europe, a think tank, found that Britain was the largest market for dark web drugs on a per capita basis, with three times more transactions per head than the US.