Organs

When families or individuals are tired of spending years on a medical waiting list, they sometimes purchase body
parts – kidneys, eyes, lungs, heart, limbs and more – for transplant on the black market.

It sounds like science fiction, but organ harvesting is an unfortunate fact in the criminology world of today.

Organ Harvesting and Human Trafficking

Organ harvesting has been tied to human trafficking and has become a booming business in the 21st century on a
global scale.

It is a criminal offense to traffic body parts, or perform transplants from any source not legally affiliated with a
hospital or other medical facility, but legality doesn’t deter either side of these transactions.

Notably, quite a lot of illegally-trafficked body parts are harvested by any means necessary, and are gladly received,
no-questions-asked, by the person willing to pay top dollar for a kidney, a heart, or a hip.

Illegal Organs: Supply and Demand

According to the American Transplant Foundation, 123,000 people in the United States are on the waiting list to
receive an organ. Every 12 minutes a new name is added to the list and an average of 21 persons per day die due to
a lack of organ availability. Corneas, kidneys, liver, lung, intestines, bone marrow are the most common transplant
needs.

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services data of Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network reports
121,333 currently awaiting organ transplant of which 100,402 are waiting for a kidney. Only 30,970 transplants
actually took place (legally) in 2015. According to the World Health Organization, America is one of many organ-
importing countries and by the use of the web, patients can get transplant packages from $70 to over $160,000.00.

USA Today conducted an investigative report in 2006 and found that illegal body harvesting is very lucrative in the
U.S. due to the high demand of body parts. The investigation revealed that from 1987- 2006 (19 years), over 16,800
families had pursued lawsuits stating that their loved ones body parts were illegally sold for an estimated $6 million
dollars. That amount is based on figures obtained from federal and local investigators, public organizations and
medical universities.

Where do the organs come from? Willing donors, in some cases. An NBC Chicago investigative reporter found that
people even boldly advertise their kidneys for sale on Craigslist. The investigation revealed that hundreds of people
in Illinois were willing to sell their kidney for a few thousand dollars. After discovering a Chicago area man who was
offered $30,000.00 for his kidney and received several hits in one month, they went undercover posing as a person
willing to sell a kidney and exchanged emails from organ brokers as well as doctors who were willing to perform the
transplant for a fee.

Unfortunately, many people become victims of the illegal organ trafficking industry as well.

Organ Trafficking Laws and Offenders

Organ trafficking is a form of human trafficking and is an organized crime. According to the UN Gift Hub, organ
trafficking falls into three categories:
(1) Traffickers who trick the victim into giving up an organ for no cost, (2) Con artists who convince victims to sell
their organs, but who do not pay or who pay less than they agreed to pay, and (3) Doctors who treat people for
ailments which may or may not exist, and remove the organs without the victim’s knowledge.

The organ trafficking trade involves a host of offenders. As the UN Gift noted, there is a recruiter who seeks out the
‘donor,’ there is a transporter of the organs, there are staff of the hospital or clinic that receives the organs, and of
course the medical practitioners who perform the transplants. There are also middlemen, contractors, buyers and
the banks that store the organs/tissues.

Decoded Science interviewed a former transplant clinical researcher for a major hospital, who spoke with us under
condition of anonymity. He stated he had encountered cases where people bought their organs from people willing
to sell. He shared an experience of an elite Saudi Arabian who arrived at the hospital for a kidney transplant
accompanied by a young man he claimed was his brother. Testing showed no genetic match. The researcher later
found out that the Saudi elite had paid the young man $50,000.00 in U.S. money for his kidney. Our source also
noted that even though there is a waiting list for organs, favoritism does occur, and money can get someone moved
up on the list fairly quickly.

Ann Cheney, author of Body Brokers: Inside America’s Underground Trade in Human Remains stated “Today we
aren’t robbing graves but we are violating corpses, we are failing to carry out donor wishes, and we are putting
patients at risk- all because we have been disturbingly complacent about what happens to people’s bodies when
they die.”

Real Life Body Snatcher

According to NBC New York, Levy Rosenbaum, known as the “Kidney Broker” was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison
and was the first proven case of organ trafficking. His indictment came from an FBI sting operation from the black
market sale of 3 kidneys for a total of $410,000.00. Rosenbaum recruited poor Israeli donors who sold him their
kidneys for $10,000.00 and re-sold the organs to Americans for over $120,000.00 each. He told undercover FBI
agents that he arranged for a lot of transplants and sold them to the Albert Einstein Medical Center and Hospital
where he acted as a facilitator for donor matches for Israeli patients from 1999-2000.

Killing To Give Life

In addition to con-artists and unscrupulous doctors, there are also extreme cases in which people are outright
murdered for their organs. Every year, there are suspicious deaths, in which the victim had their organs removed.

2012 – Vance Anderson, 51 year old painter of Philadelphia, died at the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in
Philadelphia due to complications from a lung condition. By time he his mother was to claim his body for burial, his
eyes, heart, brain and pancreas were removed. The explanation given was that the organs were “donated for
education” – but this occurred without the family’s consent. (Philly.com)
2013- Kendrick Johnson, 17 year old student of Georgia, was found dead inside of a mat at his school, the death was
ruled an accident. When his parents demanded an independent investigation, a second autopsy revealed that his
internal organs, brains, lungs, liver were missing, and the cavities were filled with newspaper. (WSBTV)
2014- Ryan Singleton, 24 year old of Georgia, went to California in pursuit of acting jobs. His body was discovered in
Death Valley with multiple organs removed. (Eyes, heart, lung, liver, and kidney were missing) The rest of his body
remained intact. The investigators told his family that his organs may have been eaten by a wild animal. (WGNTV)
2015 – Nicholas Rodriguez, 24 year old California State Prison inmate was found after a 15 hour prison riot in a
garbage can in the shower next to his cell. His body was almost cut in half and his abdominal and chest organs were
removed. This mutilation occurred in a medium security prison with surveillance. (Huffington Post)
Highest Bidder Gets You…
The demand for kidneys has reached an epidemic level in the United States and people are willing to buy or sell
through the “network” even though this is illegal and punishable by jail time plus a $50,000.00 fine.

The FDA is the regulating body on the buying and sale of organs, body parts, however it is the FBI who has made
many arrests. Who is protecting your body – or the body of your loved ones?

If you were ever curious as to how much body parts can fetch on the black market, Medical Transcription created a
snazzy infographic to show you. Some parts are shockingly cheap! Like would you want a new shoulder or a new
iPad? Both cost 500 bucks.

Other organs are prohibitively expensive, like a kidney. That little sucker costs $262,000 in the US (other countries
have it for cheaper)! Here's the full list of body parts and their cost:

Pair of Eyeballs: $1,525

Scalp: $607
Skull with Teeth: $1,200
Shoulder: $500
Coronary Artery: $1,525
Heart: $119,000
Liver: $157,000
Hand and Forearm: $385
Pint of Blood: $337
Spleen: $508
Stomach: $508
Small Intestine: $2,519
Kidney: $262,000
Gallbladder: $1,219

Recently in China, a missing 6-year-old boy was found alone in a field, crying. Upon closer inspection, both eyes had
been removed, presumably for the corneas.

In 2012, a young African girl was kidnapped and brought to the UK for the sole purpose of harvesting her organs. She
was one of the lucky ones—rescued before she went under the knife. Authorities feel this is just the tip of the
iceberg.

This isn't just an international occurrence. Kendrick Johnson, a Georgia teen, died at school January 2013. The local
sheriff quickly determined the death was a freak accident, that he suffocated after getting stuck in a rolled up mat in
the school gym. Johnson's parents however, could not—would not—accept that. Six months after his death, they
obtained a court order to have the body exhumed for an independent autopsy.

The pathologist was stunned when he found the corpse stuffed with newspaper. The brain, heart, lungs and liver
were missing. He also discovered Johnson's death was due to blunt force trauma to the right side of his neck. The FBI
is now involved in this disturbing case with potentially shattering reverberations.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes has spent over ten years studying the dark side of organ harvesting and trafficking which is
driven by greedy middle men and desperate, wealthy recipients. Black market organs are being transplanted in New
York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles at $150,000 a pop. She reports there are "broker-friendly" US hospitals,
complete with surgeons who either don't know or don't care where the organs come from.

Organ donation is only possible if the organ in question has blood and oxygen flowing through it until the time of
harvesting. A living donor can give a whole kidney, a portion of their liver, lung, intestine or pancreas. Otherwise, the
donor must be declared brain dead while circulation and oxygenation remain intact.

Today, 120,771 people are waiting for an organ, and 18 will die every day while waiting. Just one donor has the
ability to save up to 8 lives. Where there's a demand, there's a way. And for the wealthy money is no object when it
comes to a vitally needed body part.

Organ donation is strictly regulated in the US, yet a black market is alive and well. Typically a broker will team up
with a funeral home director, forging consent forms and a death certificate to harvest human tissue before the body
is cremated or buried. Sometimes organs are harvested from a living victim for compensation. In the worst case it
involves kidnapping for the purpose of organ harvesting. Always at the end of the chain is a wealthy recipient, willing
to pay big bucks with no questions asked.

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In some countries, impoverished villagers may sell an organ for several hundred dollars. In others, organ harvesting
is tied to human trafficking. Children sold into slavery or a life of sexual abuse are also used for their organs.

There's a black market for hearts, lungs, and livers, but the kidney is the most sought after. According to the World
Health Organization, approximately 7,000 kidneys are illegally harvested annually by traffickers worldwide and the
prices vary widely by country.

The average buyer spends $150,000 (though prices in excess of $200,000 are common) while the average donor gets
$5,000. The big profits go the the middle men and “organ brokers”. In the US 98,463 individuals are waiting for a
kidney as of October 25, 2013. Of those, about half will die before they receive one.

The profits are huge, and money is a temptation many brokers and doctors just cannot resist. In 2010 WHO
estimated about 11,000 organs were obtained on the black market. WHO also claims that an organ is sold every
hour of every day, 365/7.

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What is your kidney worth to you? A broker located in China openly advertised "Donate a kidney, buy a new iPad!"
In addition, the donor would be compensated $4,000 and it could be harvested quickly and easily in as little as 10
days.

There's an enormous demand for organs, and whenever there's gap between supply and demand desperate buyers
and desperate sellers will dictate a black market. Now organized crime is involved, sometimes leaving the poor
victim without their organ and quite possibly without being paid.
Even here in the U.S., there have been accusations (no proof) of allowing patients on life support to die in order to
remove the organs while the heart is still beating. This is a multi-million dollar industry, and as the wealth gap
continues to widen, it’s only expected to get worse.

The black market for organs is booming. Demand far outweighs supply, and people are paying top dollar for human
parts. A vast and mysterious underworld economy has developed to cash in on this lucrative trade. Most of these
organizations are international in scope, making organ trafficking a global criminal plague. The stories are similar:
The desperate and poor sell their organs to the rich through middlemen, who reap huge profits.

Gold
For decades, India has struggled with the problem of ‘black money’, usually rupee notes that were either illegally
obtained or not declared for tax purposes.

While much of this money has been held in cash, the massive scale of India’s illegal economy (some estimates put it
at around a fifth of the country’s GDP, others estimate higher still) means that much of India’s black money is held in
two asset classes: property and gold. Until the recent clampdown, gross gold imports in India were at 2.3% of GDP,
and many private citizens opted to store their money in gold in preference to bank deposits of cash, the rates on
which barely beat inflation.

The prevalence of black money presented a major headache for the government. With only 2.5% of Indians paying
income tax, revenue was 33% of what it should be. Other problems include corruption and the difficulty of tracking
informal cash-based labour (around 85% of the economy) as well as large scale scams involving powerful politicians,
endemic electoral fraud and offshore money transfers. According to a recent study, 21 million US dollars worth of
black money exited india in 2014, much of it in gold import and export. This followed a revision of previous data to
include Swiss figures covering gold exports.

“Due to India’s large imports of gold from Switzerland, rectifying this data issue significantly closed observed
bilateral trade gaps between the two countries,” economist Joseph Spanjers, one of the report’s authors, told the
Times of India. He went on to thank India’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and the Swiss Directorate General of
Customs for cooperating in the process.

Drastic measures

In an attempt to clamp down on the black money problem, India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared a
sudden and rapid withdrawal of all 1,000 and 500 rupee notes on November 8th of 2016. The withdrawal essentially
invalidated 86% of all cash in circulation, causing numerous problems with cash undersupply. Insufficient numbers of
the new 250 and 2,000 rupee notes had been printed, resulting in businesses grinding to a halt and 0.5%
disappearing from India’s predicted GDP growth overnight. In addition, citizens bringing in cash to exchange were
subjected to checks and balances to determine if they’d acquired their money legally, making it difficult to bring in
undeclared cash in old banknotes for exchange to new.

There were other consequences for the Indian gold market. It might be expected that a sudden withdrawal of cash
might lead to a surge in gold demand, as investors seek to position their black money assets in legal physical gold in
order to ‘launder’ them and preserve them from the rupee recall. To an extent this did happen, gold prices in India
surging from RS35,000 (£422) to RS50,000 (£603) for ten grams of gold, along with a sudden surge in gold imports in
November (around 100 tonnes of gold was imported in the days after the recall, a major spike given India’s usual
rate of 500 tonnes a year).

However, the speed of the recall meant that many weren’t able to preserve their assets in this way as gold-buying
businesses ended up unable to accept their notes. While business dropped by nearly 80% in jewellery shops in some
areas (the main means by which Indians acquire gold), black money hoarders saw an opportunity, and began moving
to acquire gold from private citizens in exchange for old currency, offering high commissions as incentives while the
lack of cash left jewellery shops out of the picture. Few took them up on the offer publicly, although of course as
always it’s hard to gauge how many took these deals in private.

Looking forward

Following the recall of notes, the gold price rose by 2.35% to around 87,000 rupees per ounce at its peak. Indeed,
while drastic, the mass recall only briefly halted the general drop in Indian gold prices from their mid-2016 highs.
Many jewellery shop owners expect business to come back stronger from the 2016 setback, as the Modi government
pushes its cashless society initiatives and more customers find themselves able to pay from more stable credit or
debit cards.

There are concerns, however, that another government crackdown on black money could see Indian gold owners
forced to declare their gold, or hit with limits on the amount of undeclared gold that can be owned by an individual.
This could cause gold demand to drop. Amendments to the income tax laws passed in late November 2016 were also
rumoured to include gold ownership limits, although this was later clarified to apply only to gold that did not match
the individual’s declared income. Nonetheless, by restricting the black market this legislation may reduce gold
demand in India.

Globally, India is the world’s second largest gold importing nation, and the price fall currently underway could well
limit price rises elsewhere, even in the face of the current geopolitical turmoil. On the other hand, Indians are just as
aware of the geopolitical climate as their international contemporaries, and as recent rises in the gold price in
rupees throughout 2017 have demonstrated local concerns aren’t the only thing driving Indian markets.
Art
After 10 months of ruling over the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, ISIS (The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) forces
were finally removed in March of this year. The joy of this victory was overshadowed by the harrowing destruction
of the Temple of Bel, which was a part of this UNESCO World Heritage site in the Syrian Desert. The group claimed
they proceeded to blow up the ancient ruins to prevent idolatry and paganism. Yet, it is widely believed that they
looted antiquities, in order to fund their operations across the Middle East.

Syrian army soldiers drive past the ruins of the Arch of Triumph in the historic city of Palmyra, in Homs Governorate,
Syria April 1, 2016. Photo by Reuters/Omar Sanadiki.
Syrian army soldiers drive past the ruins of the Arch of Triumph in the historic city of Palmyra, in Homs Governorate,
Syria April 1, 2016. Photo by Reuters/Omar Sanadiki.

According to Western intelligence officials, looting of antiquities is ISIS’ second largest source of income, only
surpassed by sales of oil. Problematically enough, the large majority of the antiquities end up in private collections of
wealthy European or American buyers, who, in turn, become sources of financial support for instability in the area,
and, arguably, for a war on the Western world.
The black market in art consists of one of the most lucrative, yet unregulated, markets in the world: one in which
billions of dollars’ worth of art are stolen every year, according to estimates by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
This activity is attractive to criminals, mainly because valuable pieces of art worth millions of dollars are relatively
easy to remove from museums or homes. It is also a crime where there are no victims, unless we consider the public
or the private owner. Evidently, raising awareness of art theft would be a good starting point in addressing the risk
of such practice to the historical and cultural heritage.

Historical artefacts believed to have been looted by ISIS, such as this coin of Berytos, clamming to be
authentic, dating back to the time of Ancient Greece, appears on eBay.

Historical artefacts believed to have been looted by ISIS, such as this coin of Berytos, clamming to be authentic,
dating back to the time of Ancient Greece, appears on eBay.

In order to track stolen pieces of art, particular measures are taken, such as the creation of worldwide databases.
Among these, London-based Art Loss Register is the world’s largest private database of lost and stolen art, antiques,
and collectables. Its owner, Mr. Julian Radcliffe, ensures that his organization contributes to police work, by not
charging them the use of the database, and helps to train the FBI’s Art Crime Team.

However, the Art Loss Register also demands the payment of fees in order to divulge information related to stolen
artworks. This was the case of a stolen Alfred Sisley painting at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Orleans, France. Art Loss
Register required the museum to pay an unaffordable fee, and, as a consequence, the painting was never retrieved.

Allée des peupliers de Moret , 1980 by Alfred Sisley has been stolen three times from the Musée des Beaux-Arts.
Allée des peupliers de Moret, 1980 by Alfred Sisley has been stolen three times from the Musée des Beaux-Arts.

Another way to prevent art theft is to publish lists of cultural artefacts at risk. This has been implemented by the
International Council of Museums, which prepared lists of items that must not be purchased by museums or art
collectors.

Regardless of how it occurs, the loss of art and antiquities does not only affect tourism industries, or renowned
museums. It represents the loss of heritage and cultural production, which knows neither limits nor borders, and this
is why a higher level of transparency of all economic transactions in the art world is essential.

Art thus became the third illegal market in the world after drugs and weapons. Trafficking in artworks has many
advantages for traffickers who see this as a long-term investment, as artworks are gaining value over the years.
Roberto Saviano, author of the novel Gomorra who describes the practices of the Neapolitan mafia explains on this
subject: "Today, art is the main channel for recycling dirty money. Because a Caravaggio painting leaves fewer traces
than a mountain of silver, it can be moved easily and is a relatively safe investment. "

Why are art thieves so short sighted? "What people don’t realize is that value doesn’t exist when something is
stolen," he said. "They’re worth a tiny proportion of that on the black market, if anything ... Who’s going to buy it?
You can’t put it on your wall."

Artists have been in the informal economy for a long time, making sales of their own works in unregulated contexts,
such as selling work out of the studio or at an art fair.
In such contexts, it is not common for them to charge sales tax, for example, and it does not seem unreasonable to
suggest that they might not report this income on their tax returns. If a dealer or curator gives an artist an emerging
artist an exhibition, it is common for an artist to gift a work of art to her and this kind of gift might not turn up as a
transaction on anyone’s books. These are the kind of gifts that Velthuis describes as cementing the social relations of
the art world. They are based on mutual generosity that cannot be measured, and so there is an argument to be
made that it should not be.

The informal economy in the art world is not only a series of shady business deals, though it does include these, but
also a way in which the distant and objective art market is personalized and made immediate. It is a symptom of the
shrouded financial transactions of the offshore economy and salve to soothe the wounds that capitalism inflicts on
those whose labor eschews its financial logic. Artists, curators, and nonprofit directors, among others, work for free
because they want recognition and want to participate in a public conversation, but also because they do not want
their labor to be monetized. Their actions provide a surplus that cannot be quantified, and the rewards they receive
are not the kind of thing you can claim on a tax form. No one wants to be poor, however, so artists, and all other
participants in the art world, turn to the market to provide the means for their existence.
Endangered Animals
Just as the Internet has becomes the world’s largest marketplace for legal products, it also supports a flourishing
network of criminal goods and services. From fueling demand for niche pets to connecting buyers with those
offering anything from rhino horn tonics to highly endangered tortoises, the Internet allows the illegal wildlife trade
to thrive as never before

The trade is the fifth largest contraband trade, ranking just after narcotics. Excluding illegal trade in timber and
fisheries, it nets an estimated $10 billion per year. All of those sales are taking a toll. According to a recent World
Wildlife Fund study, 52 percent of wildlife populations around the world have disappeared since 1970, with
overhunting being a major driver behind that decline. For some species, the study found, the illegal wildlife trade is
now the primary threat, thanks to soaring demand for certain wildlife and animal-derived products. Elephants and
rhinos are two stark examples of this. From 1998 to 2011, demand for ivory—which now fetches about $1,000 per
pound—increased by 300 percent. In 2007, 13 rhinos were poached in South Africa; in 2011, that figure spiked to
more than 1,000. Rhino horn, despite being the medicinal equivalent of eating fingernails or hair, now fetches its
weight in gold—about $30,000 per pound. If that business continues as normal, rhinos will be extinct by 2020.

Border Separation Could Lead to Depression and Disease

Because of the covert nature of this trade, it’s impossible to know just how much of it is facilitated by the Internet. It
is safe to say, however, that the majority of the trade has some online component, whether it’s connecting buyers to
sellers, allowing traders to research the market for a new animal product or working out the logistics of a smuggling
operation. “When we started investigating this, we began to expose this really dark underbelly of online markets,”
says Crawford Allan, senior director of TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring network. “Some of the rarest species on
Earth are being traded on Facebook.

”Some sellers are unaware that they are part of the illegal wildlife trade. Up to $13 million in ivory annually passes
through LiveAuctioneers.com, but according to a recent investigation, almost none of the businesses selling the ivory
can verify its provenance, meaning much of it is likely illegal. “The auction and antique world didn’t believe they
were a problem, but these data show that they are playing a pretty substantial role,” says Anya Rushing, an assistant
campaign officer at the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), the nonprofit that conducted the study.
Most involved in the online wildlife trade, however, are criminals who know they are breaking the law. But very few
law enforcement organizations around the world have special divisions dedicated to wildlife, and until very recently,
trade in animals wasn’t seen as a priority. “Law enforcement should really be doing this,” Allan says. But for the time
being, “it’s largely up to organizations like ours to snoop around, validate the information we find, analyze it and
then deliver it to authorities on a plate.”

Allan and like-minded conservationists tend to go after those at the top of the wildlife trade food chain rather than
petty players who do on-the-ground grunt work. Analytical software allows agents to combine a variety of data—
tips, online ads, email addresses, cell numbers, license plates and more—to form a larger picture of the networks
and players involved. Once they think they’ve identified a ringleader, they present their data to authorities.
Depending on where the criminal is based, that could be the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.K.’s National
Wildlife Crime Unit, Interpol or others.

There have been major victories. In 2012, data gathered by the IFAW in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service led to federal and state charges against more than 150 people selling everything from tiger skins to live birds.
But on the whole, online traders know their chances of getting caught are relatively slim.

The dark Web—hidden portions of the Internet where users often operate in complete anonymity to sell guns, drugs
and child pornography—is largely free of wildlife products, according to an investigation that Allan recently carried
out with the help of a terrorism intelligence expert. That’s because those selling illegal wildlife products don’t find it
necessary to retreat to the deep recesses of the Web. Due to lack of enforcement, they can carry out their activities
either openly or by using simple code words—ox bone for elephant ivory, YTB for yellow-tailed black cockatoo,
double engine or DE for red sand boas, four wheeler for star tortoise, striped T-shirt for tiger skin—to sneak their
wares past search investigators and their algorithms.

Allan and others have worked with eBay, Google Shopping, Etsy and more to determine what animal products can
and cannot be posted online. EBay has had some restrictions on wildlife—including a ban on live animals—in place
for more than a decade, and it recently ramped those up to include ivory. In 2012, Google reached out to TRAFFIC
for help in developing a set of policies for what animal products should and should not be allowed on Google
Shopping; those rules were put in place six months later. In 2013, Etsy followed suit, banning products made from
endangered wildlife and ivory. “Etsy had major issues for quite some time,” Allan says. “Oftentimes it’s a struggle for
these online trading companies to understand the problem and to realize that it’s happening on their turf and that
it’s an important issue. But Etsy eventually tuned in and responded.”

Websites in China—where the majority of illegal wildlife winds up—are also getting on board. In October, TRAFFIC
solidified a new agreement to ramp up monitoring and anti-wildlife trade campaigns with Alibaba, the largest e-
commerce company in the world. In the past, Alibaba’s listings have included things like new ivory and 1,000 bottles
of tiger bone wine. “This is a big deal for us,” Allan says. “Alibaba is the online trading site of Asia—it’s massive.

”These efforts seem to be making a difference: The number of online Chinese ads listing tiger claws, teeth, bone and
skin has significantly declined since 2012, according to a recent report. That doesn’t mean trade still isn’t an issue,
however. “Just last week, I found some people selling ivory on eBay,” Allan says. The seller had listed it as an
elephant carving broach—nowhere mentioning ivory—but Allan could tell by the material’s patterns that it was
indeed made from newly carved elephant tusks.
“It’s like a whack-a-mole game,” says Wolfgang Weber, senior director of global regulatory and policy management
at eBay. “We start blocking the term ox bone, and then sellers switch to another name like fauxivory.” For this
reason, he says, it will never be possible to achieve 100 percent detection and prevention online.

When Vincent Nijman, a conservation ecologist at Oxford Brookes University, first spotted Facebook photos and
videos of the earless monitor lizard in 2013, he immediately realized there was a problem. Online searching revealed
that the lizards first went to Japan, and then made their way to Germany, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, France and
the U.K. Because the species so recently appeared on the market, it’s guaranteed that all specimens have been taken
from the wild—either Indonesia or Malaysia or possibly Brunei. Decades ago, all three countries created laws that
strictly protect earless monitor lizards—poachers face a fine of up to $8,600 and five years’ imprisonment. “You
can’t catch it, you can’t keep it, and you can’t buy it,” Nijman says. “And you certainly can’t take it with you out of
the country.” All that, however, was not enough to stop the lizard from being exploited for the pet trade. Nijman
estimates that around 100 lizards have been illegally smuggled out of the wild so far.

Rare animals like the earless monitor lizard tend to appeal only to a subculture of the people who collect exotic
animals. Like drug users, those collectors tend to have a substance of choice: lizards, turtles, birds or mammals. Allan
says, “For many of them, it’s almost a pathological obsession with collecting the world’s rarest animals.” In the past,
yearly conferences tended to be the only place for collectors to meet other enthusiasts, but Facebook, YouTube,
forums and chat rooms support a flourishing online community of collectors who can now place orders for live
animals before they are even collected from the field. Although no one knows how many earless monitor lizards
exist in the wild, chances are, the species is not doing well. In recent years, forest fires and deforestation for
agriculture and plantations have decimated much of the reptile’s estimated range. Add to that the pressure from
collectors eager to turn a quick profit and it could be enough to push wild earless monitor lizards toward extinction.
This same scenario has played out before, with disastrous results. When news broke several years ago that
researchers had discovered a population of red-and-blue lories, a type of rare parrot living on a small Indonesian
island, suddenly every specialty bird collector on the planet had to have one. “There was a massive run for them,
which virtually wiped them out in the wild, nearly overnight,” Allan says. Likewise, the Kaiser’s spotted newt—a
brightly colored amphibian whose facial features seem to be molded into a permanent smile—continues to be
threatened with extinction. Around five years ago, news broke of its whereabouts in Iran, and pet traders have been
smuggling it out of the country via Azerbaijan ever since. Experts estimate that fewer than 1,000 of the animals
survive in the wild.To sidestep the awkward fact that they are contributing to the extinction of the animals they
purport to love, pet traders often claim that wild-caught animals are actually captive-bred. This helps them evade
the law and also appeases buyers, who usually take the trader at his word. “There’s now a massive industry of bogus
captive breeding,” Nijman says. The earless monitor lizard’s certain status as coming from the wild, however, makes
it a uniquely clear-cut example of the pet-smuggling problem. As such, Nijman and a co-author quickly published a
report detailing what they know about the trade, before collectors manage to breed the animals in captivity and
complicate the playing field.Since that document came out, Nijman has noticed that some of the videos and ads for
earless monitor lizards have come down. Indeed, the BION Terrarium Center in Kiev, Ukraine, was implicated in
Nijman’s investigation, but when a reporter asked about a YouTube video the center posted showing two earless
monitor lizards, owner Dmitri Tkachev said that the video had been shot by the center’s “partner” and that BION is
not working with those animals. Likewise, a gecko breeder from California who posted several enthusiastic photos
and videos of an encounter with some earless monitor lizards in Japan declined to comment about that, and queries
about an online ad for “longtime captive” earless monitor lizards, listed at €10,000 each by a seller in Germany, went
unanswered. But at least one reptile lover, Tsuyoshi Shirawa, owner of iZoo in Shizuoka and former head of one of
Japan’s biggest reptile wholesale companies, is not shy about his involvement with earless monitor lizards. He
purchased his first pair in April 2013, and his collection has since grown to seven, including several imported from
Germany and Austria. Shirawa has become a sort of hub for information about captive earless monitor lizards.
“Many people are looking for that lizard,” he says.Shirawa has his sights set on becoming the first person to
successfully breed the animals, but he vehemently insists that he does not plan to sell any of them. Instead, he
wants to give the lizards to scientists. Researchers from Tokyo University, Shizuoka University, Nagoya City
University, the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and others have either visited or contacted him for
information about his earless monitor lizards, he says, and he has even given out some DNA samples. (Allan points
out that some scientists can be just as starry-eyed as collectors—“Sometimes academics don’t ask enough questions
about the origins of specimens”—or, more worryingly, “think that they don’t need to follow the rules.”) Shirawa,
however, says he’s happy to collaborate with anyone who approaches him for valid research purposes. “I want to
give everybody my data,” he says. “Conservation of this animal is very much needed, but if we don’t know anything
about it, we won’t know how to keep it.”Allan, however, cries foul at this line of reasoning. “I’ve met many of these
people myself, and some of them actually convince themselves that they’re conservation heroes,” he says. “They
decide that the ends justify the means—that they smuggled wildlife with the best of intentions, and therefore
should be treated with respect and applause rather than being jailed.”

Seized ivory tusks, rhino horn and leopard skins, with a street value of around four million Euro, are seen at the Hong
Kong Customs and Excise headquarters in Hong Kong, China, 07 August 2013. This large seizure of wildlife products
bound from Nigeria was disguised as timber inside two containers.

Often, however, animals bred in someone’s basement or closet suffer from genetic bottlenecking and risk
transmitting exotic diseases to native populations should they ever be reintroduced into the wild. “The captive
breeding community feel they’re doing a service,” Allan says. “But really, they’re only doing a service to themselves,
for their own collection and their back pocket.” When Shirawa, now 45, was 20 years old, he was caught trying to
smuggle nearly 300 endangered turtles and lizards into Japan from Southeast Asia. Then, in 2007, he was sentenced
to more than two years in jail and fined $15,330 for claiming that wild-caught radiated tortoises and false gharial
crocodiles in his possession had been captive-bred in Japan. “I understand that what I did in the past was very bad,
and I’m very ashamed of it and have apologized,” he says. “I’ve changed now: I don’t break the law. I just really love
reptiles and always want to be together with them.”His activities with the earless monitor lizards are “not illegal
trafficking,” he continues, and he registered all of his specimens with local authorities in Japan. “I asked my
government and they said it’s no problem to import it, because this is a non-CITES species,” he says, referring to the
Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species—an agreement among 180 countries about what
animals can and cannot be traded internationally.Nijman points out, however, that the intentions of Indonesia,
Malaysia and Brunei are clear: Trade is not allowed. “We have to respect that,” he says. If Shirawa’s story is true,
then Japan, at least, is not respecting that intention—or perhaps is simply not aware of those laws. To clear up any
confusion, ignorance or laziness on the part of customs officials, Nijman is pushing for CITES to add the earless
monitor lizard to its highest-priority protection list so there will be no question about whether the trade is legal.No
doubt, however, it will only be a matter of time before the earless monitor lizard gets a code name for evading
authorities, and the investigation will have to begin anew. “It’s an arms race,” Allan says. “It will continue this way
until either wildlife goes extinct or there’s a sea change in demand, where people are no longer willing to buy this
stuff.”
Oil
The value of the crude oil production alone is worth a staggering $1.7 trillion each year. Add downstream fuels and
other services to that, and oil is a money-making machine.

Both companies and governments take advantage of this resource wealth. More of the world’s largest companies
work in the oil patch than any other industry. At the same, entire government regimes are kept intact thanks to oil
revenues.
The only problem when an industry becomes this lucrative?

Eventually, everybody wants a piece of the pie – and they’ll do anything to get their share.

The Black Market in Fuel Theft

While pipeline theft in places like Nigeria and Mexico are the most famous images associated with the theft of
hydrocarbons, the problem is actually far more broad and systematic in nature.

Fuel theft impacts operations at the upstream, midstream, and downstream levels, and it is so entrenched that even
politicians, military personnel, and police are complicit in illegal activities. Sometimes, involvement can be traced all
the way up to top government officials.

E&Y estimates this to be a $133 billion issue, but it’s also likely that numbers around fuel theft are understated due
to deep-rooted corruption and government involvement.

How Fuel Theft Actually Happens

Billions of dollars per year of government and corporate revenues are lost due to the following activities:

Tapping Pipelines: By installing illicit taps, thieves can divert oil or other refined products from pipelines. Mexican
drug gangs, for example, can earn $90,000 in just seven minutes from illegal pipeline tapping.

Illegal Bunkering: Oil acquired by thieves is pumped to small barges, which are then sent to sea to deliver the
product to tankers. In Nigeria, for example, the Niger Delta’s infamous labyrinth of creeks is the perfect place for
bunkering to go undetected.

Ship-to-Ship Transfers:
This involves the transfer of illegal fuel to a more reputable ship, which can be passed off as legitimate imports. For
example, refined crude from Libya gets transferred from ship-to-ship in the middle of the Mediterranean, to be
illegally imported into the EU.

Armed Theft (Piracy):

This involves using the threat of violence to command a truck or ship and steal its cargo. Even though Hollywood has
made Somalia famous for its pirates, it is the Gulf of Guinea near Nigeria that ships need to be worried about. In the
last few years, there have been hundreds of attacks.

Bribing Corrupt Officials:

In some countries – as long as the right person gets a cut of profits, authorities will turn a blind eye to hydrocarbon
theft. In fact, E&Y says an astonishing 57.1% of all fraud in the oil an gas sector relates to corruption schemes.

Smuggling and Laundering:

Smuggling oil products into another jurisdiction can help to enable a profitable and less traceable sale. ISIS is famous
for this – they can’t sell oil to international markets directly, so they smuggle oil to Turkey, where it sells it at a
discount.
Adulteration:
Adulteration is a sneaky process in which unwanted additives are put in oil or refined products, but sold at full price.
In Tanzania, for example, adding cheap kerosene and lubricants to gasoline or diesel is an easy way to increase profit
margins, while remaining undetected.

The Implications of Fuel Theft

The impact of fuel theft on people and the economy is significant and wide-ranging:

Loss of corporate profits: Companies in oil and gas can lose billions of dollars from fuel theft. Case in point: Mexico’s
national oil company (Pemex) is estimated to lose $1.3 billion per year as a result of illegal pipeline tapping by gangs.

Loss of government revenues: Governments receive royalties from oil production, as well as tax money from finished
products like gasoline. In Ireland, the government claims it loses €150 to €250 million in revenues per year from fuel
adulteration. Meanwhile, one World Bank official pegged the Nigerian government’s total losses from oil revenues
stolen (or misspent) at $400 billion since 1960.

Funds terrorism: ISIS and other terrorist groups have used hydrocarbon theft and sales as a means to sustain
operations. At one point, ISIS was making $50 million per month from selling oil.

Funds cartels and organized crime: The Zetas cartel in Mexico controls nearly 40% of the fuel theft market, raking in
millions each year.

Environmental damage: Not only does fuel theft cost corporations and governments severely, but there is also an
environmental impact to be considered. Fuel spills, blown pipelines, and engine damage (from adulterated fuel) are
all huge issues.

Leads to higher gas prices: Unfortunately, all of the above losses eventually translate into higher prices for end-
customers.
How to Stop Fuel Theft?
There are two methods that authorities have been using to slow down and eventually eliminate fuel theft.

Fuel dyes are used to color petroleum products a specific tint, so as to allow for easy identification and prevent
fraud. However, some dyes can be replicated by criminals – such as those in Ireland who “launder” the fuel.

Molecular markers, which are used in tiny concentrations of just a few parts per million, are invisible and can also be
used to identify fuels.

In Tanzania, the initiation of a fuel marking program using molecular markers led to significant increases of imported
petrol and diesel for the local market, and a decrease of kerosene.

At the retail level, product meeting quality standards increased from 19% in 2007 to 91% in 2013. Ultimately, this
resulted in an increase of tax revenue of $300 million between 2010 and 2014.

Cigarettes
A National Academy of Sciences committee meets this week to study a large, growing and little-understood black
market in drugs. But rather than cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine, the committee members will be discussing
tobacco cigarettes.

The global black market in tobacco is estimated to supply 11.6% of the world’s consumption, a startling 650 billion
cigarettes a year. And there are two components to this market that have drawn the particular scrutiny of law
enforcement: fake cigarettes and tax avoidance.

The reason why fake cigarettes are big business will be obvious to anyone who tunes in to Mad Men. Cigarettes
have arguably been marketed internationally more effectively than any other American product. The resulting
worldwide recognition of the Marlboro Man, Joe Camel et al. means that hundreds of millions of smokers are willing
to pay a premium for famous Western brands. This has created a lucrative opportunity for criminals –
overwhelmingly based in China -- to repackage over 100 billion cheap cigarettes a year as marquee Western brands.

While not enthusiastic about the amount of revenue being generated by fake cigarettes, U.S. policymakers have
been even more concerned about smugglers avoiding taxes for selling genuine cigarettes.

Some of the tax avoidance is conducted via off-shore suppliers who take orders over the Internet. But in recent
years policymakers and law enforcement have cracked down on this trade, with formal and informal controls on
credit card companies, shipping companies and the U.S postal service.

However, there is a simpler way for criminals to evade cigarette taxes which requires neither a shipper nor an
Internet connection: Buy them in bulk in a low tax jurisdiction and physically transport them to a high tax
jurisdiction. For example, the tax difference between Virginia and New York State cigarettes is just over $4 a pack,
and even more in New York City where further taxes are applied. An individual who throws two cases of legally-
purchased cigarettes in his car trunk and drives from Richmond to Brooklyn can make a thousand dollars re-selling
them illegally; someone driving a loaded tractor trailer truck can make over a million.

This smuggling raises multiple problems. First, criminals sell the smuggled cigarettes at a lower price than locally-
purchased cigarettes in the high-tax jurisdiction, thereby undermining the public health benefit of higher prices (i.e.,
more smokers quitting). Second, governments in high-tax jurisdictions lose an unknown but undoubtedly large
amount of tax revenue from smuggling. Third, major league criminals – perhaps including terrorists – are reaping
substantial income from the trade, with which they can fund other even more dangerous activities.

California has had some success reducing tax evasion by requiring more sophisticated, hard to counterfeit tobacco
tax stamps. But the policy that would help high-tax states the most in the battle against cigarette smuggling –
increased tobacco taxes in low tax states – is the hardest to implement. States with low tobacco taxes tend to have
significant tobacco production and the economic and political clout that goes with it to protect those low rates.

Could the federal government end the smuggling incentives that are created by the disparities in state-level
taxation? A hike in the federal tax on tobacco, which the Obama Administration proposed last year, would not
change the dynamics of cross-state smuggling because the differences between state tax amounts would stay the
same. A federal tax that was partly or fully refunded to states which set their taxes within a particular range could
in contrast reduce the financial incentive for cross-state smuggling. But at the moment that idea appears to have no
strong advocates in Washington.
 Slave-Trade
How widespread is slavery?

Though outlawed around the world, slavery has made a disturbing comeback. The slave trade is now the third
largest type of illegal trade in the world, after drugs and weapons, according to the U.S. State Department. Between
600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders each year, the State Department reports, with up
to 17,500 of them entering the U.S. The International Labor Organization estimates that slave trading generates $31
billion annually. The traders seem to be getting increasingly brazen: In June, British authorities announced that
"slave auctions" were being held in public places in airports, with brothel keepers bidding on women arriving, under
duress, from Eastern Europe. "This is a new area," says Vernon Coaker, Britain's top domestic security official. "It's
something five, 10 years ago perhaps, people very rarely talked of."

Who are the victims?

They encompass a broad range of ages, backgrounds, and nationalities. "Nikkie," for instance, once lived in an
impoverished Thai village; she was just 14 when her father sold her to a pimp who took her to Australia, where she
was forced to service dozens of men a day. Olena Popik, 21, of Ukraine, was pimped across five countries over the
course of three years and was still being rented out at Bosnian truck stops even while she was dying from AIDS.
Advocates say there are tens of thousands of victims like Nikkie and Olena, caught up in a shadowy international
trade stretching from the farthest reaches of the undeveloped world to sweatshops, massage parlors, and the
private homes of the wealthy in the U.S. and other Western nations.

Why is human trafficking flourishing?

Experts point to several factors, including the end of the Cold War. The economic shocks that accompanied the
demise of the Soviet system thrust millions of Eastern Europeans into desperate poverty and resulted in an
explosion of criminal rings capable of selling women into slavery. Globalization expanded that phenomenon
worldwide. In a world with increasingly porous borders, the poor are willing to leave their homelands in search of
jobs. "Olga," a single mother from Moldova, is a typical case. She answered an ad in a newspaper that offered to
send locals abroad ostensibly to care for senior citizens for $1,000 a month. Instead, a trafficker kidnapped her to a
bar in Kosovo, where she was severely beaten and forced to have sex with patrons. With the help of a fellow victim,
she finally escaped. An aid group is helping to arrange for surgery to repair her two severely damaged retinas.

What's being done to stop slavery?

The world is starting to take action, though victims' advocates say far more needs to happen. Countries with the
worst records—including China, Laos, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico—say they are cracking down on smugglers, while
the U.S. has put diplomatic pressure on such supply-side states to do more. In 2000, Congress set stiff new penalties
for human trafficking. But few malefactors have been prosecuted: In the last five years, the Justice Department has
tried just 91 cases. "This offense is so serious, so pervasive, and so dynamic," said Mohammed Ibn Chambas,
executive secretary of the Economic Community of West African States, "that only a coordinated effort of all states
will be able to address it successfully."

Are slaves used only for sex?

No, but most are. The Human Rights Center at the University of California at Berkeley found that 46 percent of
enslaved people in the U.S. are pressed into some form of prostitution. Domestic service accounts for another 27
percent; agriculture, 10 percent; sweatshop or factory labor, 5 percent; and hotel and restaurant work, 4 percent.
"There are so many faces on this," said Carole Angel, a former attorney for the women's rights advocacy group Legal
Momentum. "It happens in rural communities, big cities. It spans all education levels, different countries, different
races."

Do the victims ever escape?

Rarely. The captors usually manage to keep their victims under control by beating them and threatening them with
death. In most cases, only outside intervention—by authorities or a good Samaritan—can free the captives. In one
poignant case, a waitress who was tricked into leaving Albania in 2002 was slaving as a prostitute in Italy when a
man from her old neighborhood recognized her. When he saw her wasted frame, bruises, and purple cheekbones,
he bought her a fake passport and a ticket to Chicago, where he had friends. "I had no other choice," he later
explained. "I decided to help her as if she was my own sister."

Does everyone agree about the scope of the problem?

Some experts have doubts. Advocacy groups and international agencies have put forth some truly astounding
statistics—asserting, for instance, that 1 million children in Asia alone are victims of the sex trade. Even the State
Department's far more modest estimates have been second-guessed. Measuring the scope of the problem is, by all
accounts, an inexact science, due to its far-flung and often remote origins. Still, nobody disputes that the problem is
getting worse. "Some of these things may be happening in lovely homes in suburbia," says Joanne Parrott, a
Maryland state legislator and anti-slavery activist. "I don't think we've seen the tip of the iceberg."
Housing
It has been called the housing black market and with good reason: dodgy schemes that promise to put you in your
own home without a credit or history check.

For struggling Aussies, these schemes may seem like a dream come true but as a new report by Consumer Action has
shown, they generally end with the buyer paying thousands of dollars to the vendor with no home to show for it.

The report looked at two types of schemes that have been rising in popularity as housing costs have also been
increasing.

The first is the rent-to-buy scheme that sees a buyer agree to an inflated property price which they pay in rent
instalments. On top of this there are also an ‘option fee’ to have the option of purchasing the property at the end of
the term, a required deposit and potentially more fees at the vendor’s discretion.

The buyer is then expected to refinance the loan to a mainstream lender in order to complete the purchase before
the rent-to-buy term expires.

The trouble with this is that the buyers who have entered into these schemes often do so as they are unable to gain
financing for mainstream lenders and are therefore extremely unlikely to be able to refinance their loan when the
time comes. This leaves them with no property and thousands of dollars out of pocket with the report unable to find
evidence of a single buyer in who’s favour the scheme had worked.

The second kind of scheme outlined in the report is the vendor finance scheme in which a buyer agrees to an
inflated property price and the must pay a deposit, instalments, outgoings and in some cases even their First Home
Owners Grant. Similar to the rent-to-buy scheme the buyer will eventually have to refinance the loan which is
generally impossible due to the inflated property price and financial circumstances of the individual.

These black market housing schemes promise the Australian dream of home ownership without a bank loan,” said
Gerard Brody, Consumer Action CEO.

“The operators in this industry target people who are locked out of the housing market. Compared to a mortgage,
these deals are high-cost and extremely risky. We’ve seen people left much worse off – financially ruined and under
unbearable stress.”

The case studies in the report read like horror stories of the great Australian dream gone wrong. Well-meaning
buyers who want to provide a home for their families, but who do not have the financial means to go to a bank,
being preyed on by un-ethical “businesses” promising to help them.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

“These deals are pitched as an easy way to buy your own home without a mortgage, but when they come undone,
we see how complicated and dangerous they really are. As Australia faces big questions about housing affordability,
it’s vital that we crack down on these black market operators wrecking the Australian dream.” said Brody.

If you are in a difficult financial situation that you think excludes you from going to a bank for a loan consider these
tips before diving into deal and never sign a contract without receiving independent legal advice.

Avoid anything that seems too good to be true

Is someone offering you the deal of a life time? Your chance to own your own property right now with no strings
attached? There is a 99.99 per cent chance that this isn’t the selfless saviour you’ve been looking for but someone
who is looking to make a quick buck at your expense.

Avoid these sort of schemes and if you do want to go investigate them further, then make sure you get independent
legal advice first.

Work on improving your credit rating and building up your savings

If the issue is a poor credit rating or a lack of savings, and there is no immediate rush to own your own home, then
try and solve your problems rather than creating new ones. Create a budget and use each pay to slowly pay down
debts and contribute to a savings account. Collect a free report of your credit score online and make sure that any
marks against your name are legitimate. If you do find an error that is bringing down your credit rating, then get in
touch with the creditor to sort it out.

This approach will definitely take you longer to own a home than your average black market housing scheme
promises but you will emerge in a much better position.
 Currency
The black market in currencies refers to the illegal or parallel market in foreign exchange in various countries around
the world. The currency black market forms part of the underground economy by virtue of operating outside legal
banking channels. In a currency black market, cash transactions are almost always the norm, since participants
would be obviously reluctant to leave any trace of their involvement in such transactions.

Why Do Currency Black Markets Exist?

Currency black markets typically spring up in countries that have the following characteristics in common:
Weak economic fundamentals, such as a high rate of inflation and limited foreign exchange reserves.
Strict currency controls that limit the amount of foreign currency available to residents.
A fixed exchange rate regime where the domestic currency is pegged at an unrealistically high exchange rate to the
U.S. dollar or another global currency.
A lack of confidence among the citizenry in the value of the domestic currency.
As a result, substantial demand for foreign currencies is created in a nation with these attributes, as its citizens seek
to hedge the value of their cash holdings. However, the currency controls make it extremely difficult for people to
buy foreign currencies with their domestic currency at the official exchange rate. A black market, therefore,
develops for foreign currencies that would generally be priced at a significant premium to the official exchange rate,
because of its artificial value and the demand-supply imbalance.

Where Is It Becoming Prevalent?

Black market currency trading is prevalent in a significant number of countries worldwide. However, some of the
larger economies where it is currently proliferating include Egypt, Iran, Argentina and Venezuela, as summarized
below.

Egypt
The currency black market in Egypt has been flourishing since former President Hosni Mubarak was toppled in
February 2011. The Egyptian pound lost 13.4% of its value against the U.S. dollar in the subsequent two years, as
foreign currency inflows from tourists and investors dried up because of political instability and violent protests. By
January 2013, the nation’s foreign exchange reserves had fallen to $13.6 billion, from $36 billion two years earlier.
While the Egyptian pound was officially quoted at 6.7 to the USD in February, it was at about 6.9 in the black market,
having recovered from a low of 7.5 in late January when street protests sent the currency plunging.

Iran
The Middle Eastern nation’s currency, the Iranian rial, has been in free fall since new economic sanctions were
imposed on it by the United States and European Union in July 2010. These sanctions have cut Iran’s oil exports by
half, severely curtailing foreign currency inflows, thereby devaluing the rial and pushing up inflation. While the
official exchange rate is 12,260 rials to the U.S. dollar, the black market value of the rial plunged 60% to 39,000 in a
single week between Sept. 24 and Oct. 2, 2012, after the Iranian government said that the official rate would only be
available to importers of essential items such as food and medicine. The unofficial rate subsequently improved to
31,000 as the Iranian government cracked down on the currency black market.

Argentina
The currency black market in Argentina has been operating for more than a decade, ever since the nation defaulted
on its external debt in 2002. While Argentina has currency controls in place to conserve precious foreign exchange
reserves and prevent capital flight, these restrictions have only served to stimulate black market currency trading in
a nation where inflation is approaching 25%. In the black market, 6.7 Argentine pesos are required to purchase a U.S.
dollar, a premium of about 35% to the official rate of 5 pesos per USD.

Venezuela
In this South American nation, dwindling foreign exchange reserves and an annual inflation rate of 28% have led to
unprecedented demand for U.S. dollars. The Venezuelan bolivar has resultantly fallen to a value of 9.25 versus the
USD in the black market, less than half the official rate of 4.3 bolivars per USD.

The Bottom Line

A currency black market in a nation will exist as long as the adverse economic factors mentioned earlier remain in
force. However, its importance may gradually erode as the economy becomes more open, foreign exchange reserves
increase and confidence in the domestic currency returns. India is a classic example of a nation that has managed to
all but eliminate its currency black market over the past two decades as it transitioned to a market economy and
implemented a floating rate policy for its Rupee. Booming international trade and healthy economic growth have
resulted in India’s foreign exchange reserves amounting to US$295 billion by February 2013, compared with a low
point of about $1 billion in 1990.

Weapons
The Armory began as an offshoot of The Silk Road, notable as the Internet's foremost open drug bazaar, where
anything from heroin and meth to Vicodin and pot can be picked out and purchased like a criminal Amazon.com. It's
virtually impossible to trace, and entirely anonymous. But apparently guns were a little too hot for The Silk Road's
admins, who broke the site off from the main narcotics carnival. Now guns, ammo, explosives, and more have their
own shadowy home online, far from the piles of Dutch coke and American meth. But the same rules apply: with
nothing more than money and a little online savoir faire, you can buy extremely powerful, deadly weapons—Glocks,
Berettas, PPKs, AK-47s, Bushmaster rifles, even a grenade—in secret, shipped anywhere in the world.

Read on gawker.com

So I wondered, just how easy is it to get a gun? A semi-auto, 9mm Beretta 92FS with "No scratches or dents, very
slight wear from extremely light usage" would hit me for 338.69 bitcoins. At the current Bitcoin/Dollar exchange of
roughly 9-to-1, that's a little over $3,000. A stiff markup. But that got me thinking: what if you wanted to go beyond
arming yourself? What if you wanted something more powerful, or more plentiful? What if you weren't just
interested in self-defense or hunting? What if you wanted to, say, arm a 20-person paramilitary group to overthrow
a West African government in a Internet-armed coup d'état? Could a band of anonymous weapon mongers prepare
me and 19 imaginary compatriots for illegal warfare? If you've got a spare million or so, looks like the answer is yes.

Article preview thumbnail

What Is Bitcoin?
Maybe you've heard of Bitcoin—it wants to shake the entire global economy, and has become the…

Read more
——

The Amazon comparison might not be fair—The Armory wants to make itself hard to access (for obvious reasons
that have to do with not going to prison), so it's not as easy as just firing up any old website. In fact, it's not really on
the web in any traditional sense. To get to The Armory, you need to deploy a free piece of software called TOR.
Originally (and ironically) developed by the Navy, it's become the anonymizing software par excellence among
criminals, hackers, schemers, and the otherwise paranoid. TOR routes and reroutes your connection to the Internet
through a sprawling maze of encrypted nodes around the world, making it a herculean feat to find out who's who.
The Armory's URL—ayjkg6ombrsahbx2.onion—reflects that, a garbled string of letters and numbers deliberately
impossible to memorize. Once you're actually signed in, you then have to turn to Bitcoins as mandatory currency, a
further exercise in computer secrecy and complexity in itself. This ain't exactly walking into a gun show and walking
out with a pistol.

Still, the site prides itself on being about as easy to use as an illegal underground weapons dealership can be:

The Armory is an anonymous marketplace where you can buy and sell without revealing who you are. We protect
your identity through every step of the process, from connecting to this site, to purchasing your items, to finally
receiving them.

That receiving part is almost as tricky as the labyrinthine purchasing process. How exactly do you illegally ship illegal
guns to potential criminals? In pieces. Small pieces. The crafty gun dealers of The Armory aren't going to just stick an
assault rifle into a manilla envelope and drop it into a local mailbox. Rather, buyers get each gun component shipped
in shielded packages—disguised to look like other products—that then require self-assembly. You get your gun, the
dealer gets his money, The Armory retains its secrecy, and the mail carrier doesn't realize it's part of an international
weapons smuggling operation.

But who are these anonymous online gunslingers? Nobody can know for sure. Nary a single one will mention where
they source their wares, or provide even the slightest shred of locational information. You're lucky if you know what
continent they're on. Some won't even talk to you unless you use an added layer of super-tough PGP encryption in
all of your messages, gilding the lily with layer upon layer of software scrambling.

Bohica seemed ready to deliver me enough weapons to take on the US government, to say nothing of some West
African backwater.

I told each seller I was ready to do ASAP, and they went off to get me pricing information and begin the long process
of sourcing enough weaponry to arm twenty men through jungle and urban combat. Of course, I didn't buy
anything—I don't have the tens of thousands of dollars to buy crates of rifles, or perhaps millions to buy helicopters
and armored troop carriers. But there's every reason to believe that, with a little patience, a lot of money, and
uneasy trust, these things could have been in my hands—or the hands of anyone else. Say, someone who wanted to
go on a domestic shooting spree, assassinate a world leader, or any infinite number of other nefarious things you
can do with guns and armored vests.

There's a mantle of skepticism here, of course: the huge and necessary question here is Are these people real? Is an
entity like Bohica just an elaborate scam—an untraceable means of parting a fool (or warlord) with his money? I
didn't find out, of course, as I don't have a giant cache of war money or the desire to topple Equatorial Guinea, but
you're bound to wonder, are these "dealers" just putting together a federal sting operation? Sure, maybe—but
there's plenty of reason to believe this is just as terrifyingly real as it looks. The sellers have feedback ratings, and
reports in the Armory message boards of successful shipments. There's a whole thread dedicated to listing
scammers, and none of my contacts were flagged.
And then there's the spooky case of "mrpman888," who instead of listing guns for sale, listed his seller's account.
He'd had enough, he said, and wanted to offload the account to someone else—no questions asked. I asked a
question, and he replied, curtly, "i just dont want it anymore. its never been used." Could he elaborate a little?
"No."


Unless dozens of anonymous figures are all collaborating on one of the Internet's most bizarre forms of performance
art meets con art, the whole thing is just too complicated to be wholly fraudulent. Some of these guys are selling
guns. And if you're someone who doesn't want to be indiscriminately shot at, that's a problem.

Shouldn't the government be standing between us and a swarm of people who will send war weapons to anyone
with the necessary cash? Say, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives? Surely, if the DEA is creeping
up on The Silk Road's infinite drug stash, the feds must be up on The Armory? Right? Or have any idea of what it is?
Not really. A call to the ATF didn't bring much reassurance: After trying to explain The Armory to a confused
spokesperson, she replied only, after a long pause, her hair likely vibrating, tensely, from the dry air conditioning
somewhere inside the federal sprawl, "It does seem like a problem." That was as much as she could give me. She put
an ATF agent on speakerphone, who after another pause said only that he'd check into any ongoing investigation of
The Armory, but that if there were such an investigation, he wouldn't be able to tell me. The ATF later called back to
say they'd located The Armory in Virginia Beach, and that it was a fully licensed, legitimate operation. This, despite
the fact that I'd explained again and again that it existed only within a marsh of online encryption, with the explicit
mission of illegally selling illegal guns, illegally. I explained how a storefront in Virginia was sort of the opposite of
The Armory, but it wasn't much good—the ATF said it'd have to dig around itself again and get back to me. It hasn't.

The Armory shouldn't scare you, really. There are plenty of ways for a crook to buy guns, and there have been since
both crooks and guns existed. The site doesn't represent some new influx of bullets into murderous hands, so much
as it's a harbinger of things to come—and a klaxon for what's already here. The Armory is a tiny community, but the
network that hides it is immense and near impossible to dismantle. We should find solace knowing that there are
tools like TOR to keep our emails away from, say, the prying eyes of an oppressive regime. But this tool is powerful
far beyond privacy. If even a single gun is shipped to a single person, we're living in a society in which things that kill
people can be moved around the world with zero accountability. And then there might be the guy whose dream of a
heavily armed third world coup d'état is more than just an experiment.

As you might expect, it's hard to know exactly how large and widespread the online illegal weapons trade is.
According to a Carnegie Mellon University professor who researched the hidden Internet, it's comparatively small.
Nicolas Christin told Fast Company that overall, illegal gun sales on the deep Web are tiny compared with other
illegal Web trading — less than 3%.
By the way, it's entirely legal to buy guns online in the U.S. -- although the process is more complicated, depending
on various factors.
What the law says about buying guns online

What the law says about buying guns online 01:55

Nonetheless, the ATF said it's taking enforcement to a new level by creating an Internet Investigations Center aimed
at combating illegal online gunrunners.
The center includes federal agents, legal counsel and investigators. Their job: track illegal online firearms trafficking
and feed intelligence to agents in the field.
It's a gigantic task, which aims to hit a constantly moving target.
 Medicine
A black market is an illicit trading system that avoids
government regulation. It operates outside the law and
is driven by the opportunity for profit and the needs of
consumers. It is subject to the economic rules of supply
and demand and can be rapidly subverted by a change in
the laws that make possible its existence. Because the
legitimate business of selling prescription drugs is very
profitable and highly regulated, opportunities for blackmarket
entrepreneurship of these drugs exist in both
developed and developing countries.
Regulations that govern legitimate access to pharmaceuticals
are set by state, national, and international
bodies. India has circumvented international patent law
by creating a national black market, thereby making it
legal to copy a medicine that has been patented
elsewhere as long as a different and unique
manufacturing process is used. This has allowed the
Indian people and other foreign buyers to access highquality
medications at a fraction of the cost of the same
medication in the USA or Europe, but the practice has
understandably been criticised vigorously by
multinational pharmaceutical firms and the World
Trade Organization.
In other developing countries, unregulated blackmarket
production of copied pharmaceuticals is
common. The medicinal quality of these medications
varies and is often inadequate, leaving consumers in
the unenviable position of having only limited access to
basic drugs such as microbicides. Even when available,
drugs may not always be effective, which can be
catastrophic in the case of a severe bacterial infection
or a chronic infection such as HIV. Thus, while black
markets are driven mainly by economic incentives, a
moral dimension to the market also exists, which seeks
to meet human need. If interpretation of the Indian
patent allows for a black market in high-quality
counterfeit antiretroviral drugs that are affordable to
the poor in developing countries, is that such a
bad thing?
The opportunity for a broader range of types of blackmarket
prescription drugs exists in developed nations
with vastly greater per capita incomes. The illicit
manufacture or importation of counterfeit drugs in
these countries takes place but is actively monitored and
controlled mainly by customs agencies and
 organisations such as the US Food and Drug
Administration. Inner-city street markets in which
individuals divert a portion of their own medications
through illicit sales are common throughout the western
world, as recent publications from the UK and the USA
attest. Opioids, such as hydromorphone or oxycodone,
because they are highly regulated medications, fuel
much of this black-market enterprise. Doctors and
pharmacists are the gatekeepers charged with
monitoring and providing appropriate access to these
potent pain-relieving medicines.
Prescription narcotics are relatively easy to market and
can be sold at substantial profit. Hydromorphone is a
potent oral and intravenous narcotic frequently used for
management of chronic pain, commonly in palliative
care. If a patient has a high tolerance, the daily dose can
total tens of milligrams. On the street a 4-mg tablet of
hydromorphone is known as yellow dids and is actively
sought for its potent euphoric effects. It is generally
crushed, dissolved, and injected intravenously. The
value of a 4-mg tablet ranges from CAN$12–32,
depending on the supply of competing drugs such as
heroin and the buyer’s bargaining skills. The sale of
even a small portion of a 1-week prescription can
represent a huge windfall to someone who is struggling
in poverty.
Sedatives and hypnotics are also frequently sold on the
black market because of their potential euphoric effects.
The mark-up on medications of potential abuse such as
diazepam or morphine can be as much as 500% or more
over wholesale prices. For example, a 10-mg tablet of
diazepam in Vancouver, British Columbia, costs
10 Canadian cents at the pharmacy and sells for
$0·50–1·50 on the street as a blue V. 30 mg morphine
costs $0·96 in the pharmacy and sells for $20–40 on the
street, where it is known as a purple peeler. Oxycodone,
first released in 1996 as a sustained-release narcotic
preparation, has become a very popular drug of abuse. It
is colloquially known as a poor-man’s heroin and sells
for about $1 per mg.
A good example of a thriving “street” black market is
on the eastern side of downtown Vancouver, an area
with the questionable distinction of having the two
lowest per capita income postal code regions in Canada.
The corner of Hastings and Main, adjacent to the front
steps of the Carnegie Community Centre, is the
acknowledged epicentre of this trade, where sales of
 prescription medications compete with illicit drugs such
as heroin, crystal methamphetamine, and cocaine.
Doctors who serve drug-dependent residents of an
inner city face a never-ending struggle to manage the
very real medical problems that often coexist with the
active potential for prescription-drug abuse and
diversion. This is particularly challenging when a
patient has reached a stage of illness that necessitates
palliative care, with substantial pain controlled with
powerful narcotics. Often these patients remain capable
of maintaining a relatively independent life, in which
the opportunity to cash in a few of their pills can be
enticing. The corner of Main and Hastings or any
neighbourhood downtown east-side alley is not far away.
28 www.thelancet.com Medicine, Crime, and Punishment Vol 364 December 2004
The black market in prescription drugs
Stefan Grzybowski
Department of Family Practice,
University of British Columbia,
F-417, BC Women’s Health
Centre, 4500 Oak Street,
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6H 3N1
Correspondence to:
Dr Stefan Grzybowski
sgrzybow@interchange.ubc.ca
Patients with anxiety, chronic pain, chemical
dependency, and chaotic lifestyles are the daily grist of
the inner-city doctor. Requests for relief of chronic pain
and dysphoria are both frequent and real. A doctor’s
ability to negotiate appropriate prescribing varies
according to experience, humanism, and patience,
especially in the face of such obvious need. Some
patients can be aggressive and coercive; once a doctor
has set a precedent by writing a prescription for
paracetamol plus codeine or diazepam, it is increasingly
difficult to refuse the patient’s request on subsequent
visits. Even if a physician suspects that the drug they are
prescribing may be sold for cash, this realisation may be
tempered by the hope that the money will be used to buy
food.
This black market, which exists in a fairly open
fashion in Vancouver, has been a challenge for
authorities to control. In the past 2 years, Vancouver’s
City Council has heightened police presence in the
downtown core, driving some of the trade underground.
Police focus is mainly on the illicit drug trade in
substances such as heroin and cocaine and the highvolume
 dealers with connections to organised crime.
The petty trade in prescription drugs rarely merits more
than a warning and is difficult to police because carrying
a prescription drug is quite justifiable unless the
offender is actually caught in the act of selling it.
Standing in front of the Carnegie Centre one senses the
eyes of the loitering crowd waiting for the uniformed
constables to move on so business can resume. Some
experts believe that an expanded legalistic approach to
the problem will be ultimately effective if enough police
are positioned on the street, penalties are increased, and
the supply evaporates. Perhaps if established sites for
dispensing daily prescriptions and directly observed
therapy for individuals suspected of abusing their
prescription medications are added to the equation, we
might strengthen this legalistic approach. The history of
the previously attempted prohibition of alcohol and
more recently the so-called War on Drugs makes one
sceptical.
It is difficult if not impossible to separate the diversion
of prescription drugs like morphine or diazepam from
the illicit trade in heroin and cocaine. The curbside
consumer considers what is available on any given day
and chooses accordingly. In concert with increased
policing, the City Council in Vancouver has created safe
injection sites along with more drug detoxification and
treatment beds for chemical dependency. A plan is
forthcoming for a local clinical trial in heroin-assisted
treatment. All of these approaches challenge and
undermine the fundamentals of the illicit drug trade
and consequently the diversion of prescription drugs,
and will perhaps balance and support the police
initiatives described above. We are unlikely to make
substantial progress in stemming the diversion of
prescription drugs of potential abuse until we move
towards a more effective and open approach to the
problem of drug dependency and the poverty and
societal neglect that underlie it.
The economic incentives that drive the black markets
will always exist. Regulations that create the opportunity
for the illegal manufacture or diversion of prescription
drugs are bound in the moral dilemma that surrounds
the needs of the people who are least privileged and have
the fewest resources in our societies. Perhaps we can
address the root inequities that create the social context
for the existence of the black markets in a way that
benefits everyone.
 Silk Road 1.0 – 3.1
Silk Road was an online black market and the first modern darknet market, best known as a platform for selling
illegal drugs. As part of the dark web, it was operated as a Tor hidden service, such that online users were able to
browse it anonymously and securely without potential traffic monitoring. The website was launched in February
2011; development had begun six months prior. Initially there were a limited number of new seller accounts
available; new sellers had to purchase an account in an auction. Later, a fixed fee was charged for each new seller
account.

In October 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shut down the website and arrested Ross Ulbricht under
charges of being the site's pseudonymous founder "Dread Pirate Roberts". On 6 November 2013, Silk Road 2.0 came
online, run by former administrators of Silk Road. It too was shut down, and the alleged operator was arrested on 6
November 2014 as part of the so-called "Operation Onymous". Ulbricht was convicted of eight charges related to
Silk Road in the U.S. Federal Court in Manhattan and was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
Darknet
What Is the Purpose of the Darknet ?

The dark web is about protection from authorities and law enforcement

The overarching intent of the Darknet is to provide a haven of safe anonymity online, where people can virtually
interact without fear of the law or other punishment. The Darknet houses conversation forums, whistleblower blogs,
matchmaking services, online marketplaces, documentation resources, and other services.

The Positive: The Darknet, in part, is a sanctuary for democracy and opposition to corruption. Here, whistleblowers
can go to report corporate and government misconduct to journalists, exposing the corruption that is hidden from
the public. The Darknet is also a place for individuals in oppressive countries or oppressive religions to find like-
minded thinkers, and possibly find help to escape their oppressive circumstances. And thirdly, the Darknet is a haven
for journalists and people of controversial lifestyles (like BDSM) to communicate and network without fear of
reprisals.

The Negative: the Darknet is also a black market, where contraband and illegal services can be bought and sold.
Narcotics, firearms, stolen credit card numbers, illegal pornography, money laundering services, and even hiring
assassins are some of the marketplace options available to you on the Darknet.

How Does the Dark Web Work?

The Dark Web conceals your identity through complex encryption

You need to be computer-proficient enough to install and use specialized software. If that's you, then there are two
Darknet options available to you: the I2P protocol, and the TOR protocol. These are two different technologies that
handle the cloaking and anonymizing work behind the scenes.

In both cases, the Darknet works by using complex mathematical encryption to scramble the personal identities,
network identities, and the physical locations of the participants. All network traffic is bounced around thousands of
servers around the world, making tracing effectively impossible. All business and messaging are conducted via
pseudonyms that are disconnected from your real identity. Most money transactions use bitcoin and the services of
escrow third-party services to protect both the buyer and seller from dishonest trading.

To participate in either the I2P or TOR Darknet, you need to install specialized encryption software, a specialized web
browser, and if you want to purchase anything: you'll also need to buy bitcoins and install bitcoin wallet software.

There are Two Darknets?

TOR and I2P are the two dark web protocols.

Yes, there are two darknets, with the TOR darknet being the more popular of the two. TOR focuses on giving users
anonymous access to both the regular web and the Darknet. Dark websites on TOR use the .onion domain name
(e.g. addresses like http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion). Darknet surfing is usually faster with TOR, and the cloaked
population is very high in the TOR virtual world.

TOR stands for 'The Onion Router'.

I2P is a smaller hidden network, generally slower for speed performance, and more exclusive than TOR; you cannot
use I2P browsing to see regular web pages. I2P is expected to grow in population over time, and some argue that I2P
is more resistant to law enforcement surveillance.

How Do You Pay for Products and Services on the Darknet?

Since using PayPal or credit card payments would give away your identity, the Darknet prefers to use bitcoin virtual
currency, which is even less traceable than cash. In many cases, a third-party escrow service will act on behalf of
both the purchaser and the seller by acting as a trusted middleman in exchange for a commission fee.

Bitcoin exchanges are conducted using anonymous account numbers, much like Swiss bank accounts but with more
cloaking. These anonymous account numbers are what we call your bitcoin 'wallet', which is specialized software
you install.

Remember: bitcoin is an unregulated currency. If you feel defrauded or dishonestly treated in a financial transaction,
you cannot go to a bank and ask for them to refund your money. Once bitcoin money has traded hands, it cannot be
electronically reversed.

How Does Delivery of Contraband Work?

Just like a package from Amazon, Darknet contraband goods are delivered via regular post or courier shipping
services. Yes, that means weapons and narcotics arrive in much the same way as that purchased pair of blue jeans.
The risk revolves around your Darknet purchase being identified by law enforcement. This risk varies substantially
from place to place, as jurisdictions around the world observe different laws around inspecting and opening parcels.

In the USA, post and shipping services use a combination of x-rays, sniffing dogs, and visual inspection to identify
contraband. Should your incoming contraband package become identified and be considered serious enough for
police to investigate, the authorities may assign an undercover agent to deliver the package to you, and elicit
statements from you to admit knowledge of the parcel's contents.
There is definitely a risk of getting caught receiving contraband. Should your parcel be seized by law enforcement,
but you escape prosecution, then you can call on your escrow service to have the seller send another identical
package, or refund your money. If the police catch you and charge you with contraband infractions, then you
hopefully have a really good lawyer.
Acropolis
Acropolis Market is a bit different marketplace since its main products are books and digital services, unlike other
markets where drugs are the target items. The books listed for sale are mainly related to fraud, security, and
hacking;although there are those instructing readers on how to earn easy money – How to make 1000 per day,for
example and similar titles.

The website has a uniquedesign. Creating an accountis a pretty straightforward process, but you will need a referral
link since it is the only way to register. Once you create an account, you can insert and verify your PGP key.

Navigation on the website is smooth and easy; categories are listed on the left side of the page, and are easily
accessible. Drug listings are mainly cannabis (60) and stimulants (20);a few other kinds of drugs are placed in other
categories.

The market has a friendly and supportive community forum with more than 700 members;but, you will not be able
to login with the account you’ve created for the market – you will have to open a separate account to be able to
post on the forum.