Free Silk Road by Eileen Ormsby Page A

said. ‘When it hit us on the train, we knew something wasn’t right. The carriage turned into a giant sea monster and we were swirling around in its stomach. Everything was wavy and sounds were distorted.’
    It soon hit them that they hadn’t taken ecstasy. The 2CB – which had a recommended dose of 20–25 milligrams – had arrived in record time and, mistaking it for the MDMA, they had taken a dose six times higher than they should have. They would be on an intense, and not particularly enjoyable, psychedelic ride for the next six hours or so. Fortunately 2CB is not toxic at such levels, but it could have been a tragic outcome had other drugs been involved.

    Vendors on Silk Road competed to provide the best customer service. Packaging of goods was one of the important factors in determining the quality of a seller. Although it was strictly forbidden to discuss packaging on the forums – everyone knew that members of law enforcement were forever lurking – many people privately shared the often ingenious methods.
    Most sellers, when providing small amounts of powders, would simply supply the goods in a vacuum-sealed pouch, flattened in a standard business envelope, complete with window and legitimate (or legitimate-looking) return address. Thus a gram of cocaine, ecstasy or heroin would arrive folded within a few sheets of blank A4 paper in an envelope from a real estate agent, bank or travel broker, undetectable to human touch or canine snout from the outside. Such envelopes were indistinguishable from the billions of other pieces of business mail circulating the globe every day.
    In this case, should a person be unlucky enough to have their mail opened by customs or other authorities, the substance would be discovered. One vendor provided a little extra for the bureaucrat who intercepted the letter: dealer ‘MarijuanaIsMyMuse’ would provide a slip of paper inside the envelope saying, ‘If you are the intended recipient, please use responsibly. If you are law enforcement, go fuck yourself.’
    Other vendors were more creative with their packaging, especially those who supplied goods that could not be as discreetly secreted in a slim envelope. Those who were sending pills, plants or larger quantities of powders might hide them inside cheap plastic ‘gifts’, in cut-out pages of thick catalogues or behind false cardboard ‘walls’ of a padded envelope. One member received pills stuffed inside a hollow marker pen, and another was sent cocaine in hollowed-out batteries inside a toy. An article in The Monthly reported that a buyer found his foil package in the glue behind a shampoo sample inside a magazine.
    Sometimes the stealth of a vendor was so ingenious that recipients would think they had been ripped off. If a buyer was not expecting a particular method of stealth, they could jump to the conclusion that they had been scammed; only by completely ripping apart the package would they find the goods cleverly secreted within. A sheet of acid might be disguised as a business card, or pills distributed inside the bubbles of a bubble-wrap package.
    ‘I love vendors who use 007-style stealth,’ said one member. ‘Not only am I getting drugs in the mail, I get to have a little treasure hunt to find my goodies. So much fun!’
    Occasionally the search for drugs inside a package was fruitless for the buyer. Some vendors were guilty of ‘selective scamming’, whereby they would send an empty package so that any tracking information would show that the parcel had been sent. The vendor would then use this as ‘proof’ they had mailed a package when the matter went to Silk Road’s dispute resolution.
    Then there were vendors who really screwed up. One overworked seller, rushing to make the evening mail pick-up, forgot to include postage on all his packages. Ministers of a small church in southern USA were surprised to receive returned-to-sender mail that they had never sent out. Even more mystifying were the