The Epic Rise and Fall of a Dark-Web Psychedelics Kingpin

In fact, agents were still there, in his cousin’s home, listening in on the call, which she had made at their instruction. Akasha told his cousin not to talk to the cops—not knowing she already had—and promised to pay for her lawyer. He advised her to delete every communication they had ever had. Then he hurriedly put Shimshai into “vacation mode” across all the dark web markets. “We are closed,” he later wrote on the profile pages. “Hurry and leave before the AI gets you.” Soon after, he got a call from Puzzles, who had ridden his bicycle to a Verizon store to get a new phone and to have the phone carrier remotely wipe the one seized by the feds. Both men were deeply anxious, in damage control mode. But it was just bark, after all, wasn’t it? Not actual DMT. And maybe, they told each other, the agents had bought Puzzles’ story. They had not bought it. In reality, they had been closing in on Akasha for years. Homeland Security, court documents would later show, had first learned th ... Read full article.