Lavish life of Canadian cybercriminal revealed
Trois-Rivières native liked expensive cars
When Alexandre Cazes woke up in his Bangkok home on July 5, one of four properties he owned in Thailand, the 25-year-old multimillionaire from Trois-Rivières, Quebec, likely felt on top of the world.
His Thai wife was expecting their first child, he owned vacation homes in Antigua, Cyprus and Phuket, and on his computer was a document listing his net worth at US$ 23 million. That total included the Lamborghini Aventador and Porsche Panamera he liked to drive around town.
According to a U. S. court document made public Thursday, Cazes did not even have a chance to close the laptop he had been working on in his bedroom when police raided the home and his charmed life came crashing down.
At a news conference in Washington, U. S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions identified Cazes as the creator and administrator of an illegal online marketplace that made tens of millions of dollars facilitating the trade of narcotics, firearms, stolen identification documents and computer hacking tools.
The site, AlphaBay, part of the dark web, used encryption technology to shield the identity of buyers and sellers; all t ransactions were conducted in Bitcoin or other untraceable digital currencies. An AlphaBay employee once said the site, which authorities shut down the day of Cazes’ arrest, serviced more than 200,000 users and 40,000 vendors.
“This is the largest dark net marketplace takedown in history,” Sessions said.
A week after his arrest, Cazes was found dead in his jail cell of an apparent suicide. Thai media reported that he had hanged himself with a towel, but autopsy results have not yet been released.
Cazes would have known that the United States was seeking his extradition on charges including conspiracy to engage in racketeering, conspiracy to distribute narcotics, distribution of narcotics, conspiracy to commit identity theft and transfer of false identification documents. If convicted, he faced a possible life sentence.
With his death, the United States Attorney in Fresno, California, filed a civil action Wednesday seeking forfeiture of all Cazes’ property. The document details the staggering wealth Cazes accumulated since he is alleged to have created AlphaBay in late 2014.
“Cazes, as the founder, oversaw AlphaBay’s operations since its inception and has controlled the massive profits generated from the operation of the business, collecting tens of millions of dollars in commissions from the illegal transactions facilitated by AlphaBay,” the document reads.
Among the property authorities are seeking to seize are a Lamborghini Cazes bought for $900,000 (all dollar figures are US), a Porsche worth nearly $ 300,000, a Mini Cooper used by his wife worth $ 81,000 and a BMW motorcycle valued at $21,000.
In addition to his six properties — four in Thailand, plus the Antigua and Cyprus properties — the forfeiture demand is seeking the contents of a dozen bank accounts in Thailand, Lichtenstein and Switzerland, as well as substantial holdings of the digital currencies Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash and Monero.
When Royal Thai Pol i ce, assisted by the FBI and the U. S. Drug Enforcement Agency, raided Cazes’ residence in Bangkok, they found his laptop open and unencrypted. Police were able to see that he had been l ogged on to AlphaBay, seeking to reboot it after a service outage caused by police. He was also logged in to AlphaBay forums as “Admin,” r esponding to users’ comments.
Cazes had told friends and family that his life of luxury was made possible by legitimate investments and trading in Bitcoin. But the court document portrays him as an enthusiastic criminal, who launched the underworld marketplace with a cheerful, “happy trading!” One of the “Frequently Asked Questions” posted on the site was “Is AlphaBay Market legal?” The answer: “Of course not. We are an anonymous marketplace selling drugs, weapons and credit cards ... We take no responsibility i f you get caught, so protecting yourself is your responsibility.”
In the end, it was Cazes who failed to adequately protect himself. Known on AlphaBay by the pseudonym Alpha02, he had carelessly used a personal email address, Pimp_ Alex91@ hotmail. com, to send a welcome message to AlphaBay customers in the site’s early days, the court document says. He used the same address when responding to customers resetting their passwords.
Investigators determined the address belonged to Cazes, who had used it with his full name while posting on an online tech forum in 2008.
There was no sympathy expressed for Cazes at Thursday’s news conference, when Sessions identified recent cases of teenagers who died of overdoses after taking opioids bought on AlphaBay.
“The ability of these drugs to so instantaneously end these promising lives is a reminder to us all of just how incredibly dangerous these synthetic opioids are — especially when they are purchased anonymously from the darkest places on the internet,” he said.
The investigation involved law enforcement from a total of seven countries, including the RCMP, as well as Europol.
Rob Wainwright, executive director of Europol, had a warning for other traffickers on the dark web. “You’re not as safe as you think you are, ” he said.
THIS IS THE LARGEST DARK NET MARKETPLACE TAKEDOWN IN HISTORY.