Drug Trafficking on Darkmarkets: How Cryptomarkets are Changing Drug Global Trade and the Role of Organized Crime

By Federico Bertola

Drug trafficking on darknet based marketplaces has become a highly concerning topic in law enforcement activities, recently. Even though Darkmarkets represent only a tiny fraction of the global drug trade, they are changing the drug markets social networks, introducing a new paradigm of the link between vendors and buyers of drugs. The aim of this study is to critically review the darkmarkets’ ecosystem and the previous literature regarding these new marketplaces, trying to investigate how the drug trade is changing with these new technologies, and the role of organised crime (OC) in these new illegal markets. And trying to understand how and whether is it involved OC on these cyber drug markets and the chain behind them. Despite opinions of part of the academy, the results show that there are no empirical evidences of direct involvement of OC as vendors in darkmarkets. However, there are evidences of an indirect role of OC in darknet drug trafficking, as supplier of illegal drugs to the online-vendors.

AM J QUALITATIVE RES, Volume 4, Issue 2 (Special Issue), pp. 27-34, 2020.