Caught by the FBI,ex-grammar boys who ran a £1m dark web drugs empire at university
TWo former grammar schoolboys from middle class backgrounds used the secretive ‘dark web’ to create an international drug dealing operation worth £800,000, a court heard.
‘Prime mover’ Basil Assaf and company director’s son Elliot Hyams both attended the prestigious Dr Challoner’s Grammar School in Amersham, Buckinghamshire.
But after studying at Manchester University they progressed from taking drugs with fellow undergraduates to turning a flat into a sophisticated export operation trading ecstasy, LSD and ketamine, a court was told.
Using the ‘dark web’ marketplace the Silk Road, they drew inspiration from Walter White – the teacher who turned to drug dealing in cult TV show Breaking Bad.
A court heard that weak-willed Hyams was eventually thrown out of the gang by ringleader Assaf. Two other students with particular areas of expertise were recruited – James Roden, who was reading computer science, and Jaikishen Patel, who studied pharmacology.
They exported drugs across Europe and to America, Australia and New Zealand, enjoying a lifestyle ‘far above that of typical students’, including holidays to Jamaica and the Bahamas, Manchester Crown Court was told.
A photograph taken on a Caribbean trip included an image of a baseball cap which had ‘Billionaire Boys Club’ written on it.
They boosted their income further by avoiding paying commission to Silk Road by taking payment in the crypto- currency Bitcoin. The court heard this money has yet to be traced. The group were caught after the FBI investigation seized Silk Road’s servers in Iceland and closed down the site.
on the same day, in october 2013, Assaf and Roden were arrested after a raid by the National Crime Agency on their ‘drug dealing factory’ flat. Inside, along with the drugs, were laptops, thousands of pounds of cash – and a baseball bat next to the front door.
William Baker, prosecuting, said the four shared a ‘common interest’ in consuming drugs while at university and progressed to selling them to other students.
He said: ‘In May 2011 they went online selling drugs on the Silk Road website on the dark web.’ The drugs were sourced from Belgium, China, Germany, the Netherlands and Pakistan.
More than 6,300 transactions in exporting and supplying drugs took place, including 16.7kg of ecstasy in its crystal form with a street value of just under £750,000.
Sales on the Silk Road website were valued at $ 1.14million (£812,000), the court heard. However, their profits are likely to have risen because of Bitcoin’s stratospheric rise in value. In a message recovered during the investigation Assaf boasted he was ‘more than
‘More than happy to do time for this’
happy to do time for all of this’ and that if Bitcoin ‘continues going up whilst we’re inside there’s a chance we’ll come out with mills’.
Defending Assaf, now 26, Alistair Webster QC, said: ‘It was his view at the time … that what he and his friends were doing was morally defensible.’
Hyams’ barrister, James Pickup QC, said that Assaf had taken advantage of his ‘naive’ and ‘weakwilled’ friend.
The four – all from London – have admitted counts of conspiracy to importing, exporting and supplying controlled drugs. A fifth defendant, Joshua Morgan, 28, has admitted assisting an offender in his paid role of packaging the drugs. They are due to be sentenced today.