Illicit payments for illicit goods: noncontact drug distribution on Russian online drug marketplaces

Alexander Mikhaylov and Richard Frank

Global Crime, 2018, vol. 19, issue 2, 146-170

Abstract: The distribution or consumption of traditional drugs has become the subject of stringent penalties throughout most of the world and synthetic designer drugs have become the alternative. Novel psychoactive substances, also called ‘legal highs’, are highly varied in terms of chemical composition. These substances are advertised and distributed as an alternative to traditional drugs on the Internet, making identification of new substances and enforcement difficult. For this article, we downloaded and analysed 28 Russian-language online drug marketplaces which distribute traditional and novel psychoactive substances. All marketplaces used a noncontact drug dealing method where the seller and the buyer communicate through the Internet to arrange for payment and delivery of drugs without meeting face-to-face. Geographic information, price, amount, substance type and payment method data were extracted. Findings indicate such marketplaces are able to operate due to the ability of their clients to pay anonymously with the virtual currencies – Qiwi and Bitcoin.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17440572.2018.1460951 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:fglcxx:v:19:y:2018:i:2:p:146-170

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FGLC20

DOI: 10.1080/17440572.2018.1460951

Access Statistics for this article

Global Crime is currently edited by Carlo Morselli

More articles in Global Crime from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().