The alleged owner of Dark Web drug market AlphaBay was tracked down by the FBI because he was rather dumb. The administrator of the illegal website was using his real email address (and indeed Hotmail) in the content management system he had chosen to run the website.
This is one of the surprising details in the case of Alexandre Cazes, the 25-year-old who was arrested earlier this month in Thailand as a suspect for managing the illegal AlphaBay page.
Cazes' AlphaBay website had become the Internet's largest black market, with more than 200.000 users and 40.000 sellers. It had more than 250.000 products in its listings, making it almost 20 times larger than Silk Road, which was shut down in 2013 by the FBI.
The strangest fact, according to the US prosecutors, is that the accused was using his real email address, a Hotmail address – [email protected] – as CMS communication email according to Motherboard. This resulted in all new users receiving welcome messages from this address after registering on the site or using the password change tool.
Authorities even report that Alexandre Cazes – or Pimp Alex – has been using this address for a number of years.
So it was very easy to find out that address "[email protected]” belonged to a Canadian named Alexandre Cazes with a date of birth of October 19, 1991, matching the numeric identifier found in his Hotmail email address.”
Fortunately, he didn't include his VAT number....
But the idiocy doesn't stop there: Cazes used the same e-mail in various posts he made on forums and blogs on the internet. He was using the same nickname and email address….
Of course, it could be that some really clever Dark Web page manager did all of this to lead law enforcement down the wrong digital paths.
But when authorities raided Cazes' home in Bangkok, Thailand, they found him logged into AlphaBay's website as an administrator, actively communicating about problems one of its data centers was having.
It should be mentioned that Cazes had made several attempts to protect himself and his illegal activities, but he did not encrypt his personal laptop.
Stupidity knows no bounds
In case you were in any doubt that Cazes didn't know what he was doing, he had used the same Pimp Alex Hotmail address for his own business – EBX Technologies. How did the police know Cazes was behind EBX Technologies? It was on his LinkedIn profile…
All this allowed the authorities to obtain $5 million in Bitcoin, $2 million in Ethereum, $770.000 in Zcash and $474.000 in Monero, which were shifted to government accounts.
Nothing was spared, the cops didn't even have to ask for the bank accounts as Cazes had listed them all, along with their homes and luxury cars in an excel on his unlocked, unencrypted laptop.
Authorities report
“The document had 'TOTAL NET WORTH' written in bold at the top of the document. Under the heading Cazes had divided his profits "into various subcategories such as Holdings of Assets and Cash Holdings"
Although his website sold fake IDs, neither Cazes nor his wife – who with a simple social media search authorities were able to trace to Bangkok's Mahidol University – thought of using them to hide their ill-gotten gains.
Their real names were also used to buy property in Bangkok – two houses, side by side and just a seven-minute drive away from Mahidol University. Other houses were found in Phuket, Cyprus, Antigua and Barbuda and of course confiscated.
Several cars were also seized: a Lamborghini Aventador, a Porsche Panamera S and a Mini Cooper – all registered to the same address in Bangkok.
Although Cazes was able to obtain Antigua and Barbuda citizenship by purchasing a $ 400.000 property there, he was unable to use it. Police found and confiscated their passports at home. Authorities also discovered that he was in the process of acquiring citizenship from Cyprus by investing more than 2m euros in real estate there. He has even sent money from Thailand through Liechtenstein to Cyprus in an attempt to hide…
Too late. His identity was already apparent thanks to his Hotmail address. He lived in a house he had in his own name.
End
Just a week after Cazes was arrested and locked up in a Thai prison he was found dead in his cell. Authorities say it was a suicide.