Monday, July 28, 2025
LBNN
  • Business
  • Markets
  • Politics
  • Crypto
  • Finance
  • Energy
  • Technology
  • Taxes
  • Creator Economy
  • Wealth Management
  • Documentaries
No Result
View All Result
LBNN

The Epic Rise and Fall of a Dark-Web Psychedelics Kingpin

Simon Osuji by Simon Osuji
May 22, 2025
in Artificial Intelligence
0
The Epic Rise and Fall of a Dark-Web Psychedelics Kingpin
0
SHARES
0
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


In fact, agents were still there, in his cousin’s home, listening in on the call, which she had made at their instruction.

Akasha told his cousin not to talk to the cops—not knowing she already had—and promised to pay for her lawyer. He advised her to delete every communication they had ever had. Then he hurriedly put Shimshai into “vacation mode” across all the dark web markets. “We are closed,” he later wrote on the profile pages. “Hurry and leave before the AI gets you.”

Soon after, he got a call from Puzzles, who had ridden his bicycle to a Verizon store to get a new phone and to have the phone carrier remotely wipe the one seized by the feds. Both men were deeply anxious, in damage control mode. But it was just bark, after all, wasn’t it? Not actual DMT. And maybe, they told each other, the agents had bought Puzzles’ story.

They had not bought it. In reality, they had been closing in on Akasha for years.

Homeland Security, court documents would later show, had first learned the name Shimshai in a tip shared with the agency in 2017. The source, who has never been revealed, went as far as linking that secret handle to a PO Box in Nederland, Colorado, which was connected to the address where Akasha, his housemates, and Oliver the ring-tailed lemur had lived.

For the department, an upstart DMT dealer was less of a priority than the dark web’s purveyors of cocaine, fentanyl, and heroin. But after that tip, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) created an alert for the name Akasha Song. Four years later, in the fall of 2021, when José mistakenly shipped a kilogram of bark from Brazil to a customer in Brooklyn with Akasha’s phone number on it, the alert was triggered—just as it would be again six months later when José sent the shipment to Akasha’s cousin.

Those alerts were enough to persuade Kevin Vassighi, an investigator who had joined HSI’s Denver field office in 2020, to check out Shimshai’s accounts on the dark web. Vassighi, a central-casting federal agent with a square jaw, square shoulders, and a high-and-tight haircut, was surprised by the variety and scale of Shimshai’s psychedelic sales. He noted that the dealer sometimes used the avatar of Rafiki, the monkey from The Lion King, and connected that image with local news articles about Akasha’s lemur. Vassighi was particularly disturbed to see Shimshai offering DMT vape pens. Vapes, in Vassighi’s mind, were for teenagers. “That indicated to me that he was selling to a more youthful audience,” Vassighi says. “We’re trying to protect kids.”

Image may contain Diagram and UML Diagram

A cryptocurrency tracing chart used as evidence to support Akasha Song’s criminal charges.

Courtesy of Akasha Song

By the spring of 2022, HSI was tracking the location of Akasha’s phone, following him as he drove his new Tesla around Boulder, and watching his home from a camera on a nearby telephone pole. Agents had dug through Akasha’s trash and found Shimshai’s trademark DMT packaging, the logo of a head with a rainbow pouring out of it. And despite Akasha’s alleged attempts at money laundering, they had traced his cryptocurrency to show what they believed to be transactions indirectly flowing into Akasha’s account on the crypto payment service BitPay from half a dozen dark-web markets.

“He has a crunchy vibe. He has a lot of money. He doesn’t seem to go to work,” Vassighi recalls thinking. “A lot of stuff was pointing us in the direction of Joseph Clements”—enough that by June of that year they’d obtained a warrant to search his home.

When Akasha heard the banging on the door, he was just sitting down in his bedroom to eat some pad thai and watch Netflix. He and Joules had been fighting, so she was decompressing alone upstairs. She ran down to the first floor to see who was making such a commotion.

By then, Akasha had a sense of exactly who had come knocking. He looked over to the couch and considered the two long, flat safes under it: One was full of money. The other was full of drugs. He grabbed the one full of drugs and quickly ran into the unfinished space over the garage. He hurriedly hid the safe under the insulation there. Inside was changa, DMT powder and vape pens, ketamine, LSD, MDMA, and mushrooms.



Source link

Related posts

Humanoid robots embodiment of China’s AI ambitions

Humanoid robots embodiment of China’s AI ambitions

July 27, 2025
TCL QM8K Review: The Best Mid-Tier TV

TCL QM8K Review: The Best Mid-Tier TV

July 27, 2025
Previous Post

Business Credit Made Easier for MSMEs with New Digital Solutions

Next Post

Biggles Removals weekly update on Randburg’s property, infrastructure and moving trends

Next Post
Biggles Removals weekly update on Randburg’s property, infrastructure and moving trends

Biggles Removals weekly update on Randburg’s property, infrastructure and moving trends

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

RECOMMENDED NEWS

Tribal health workers aren’t paid like their peers. See why Nevada changed that.

Tribal health workers aren’t paid like their peers. See why Nevada changed that.

2 years ago
Lebanon Blocked Iran Planes After US Warnings: Security Source

Lebanon Blocked Iran Planes After US Warnings: Security Source

5 months ago
How to Day Trade Crypto?

How to Day Trade Crypto?

2 years ago
Countries can tap tax potential to finance development goals

Countries can tap tax potential to finance development goals

2 years ago

POPULAR NEWS

  • Ghana to build three oil refineries, five petrochemical plants in energy sector overhaul

    Ghana to build three oil refineries, five petrochemical plants in energy sector overhaul

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • The world’s top 10 most valuable car brands in 2025

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • When Will SHIB Reach $1? Here’s What ChatGPT Says

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Top 10 African countries with the highest GDP per capita in 2025

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Global ranking of Top 5 smartphone brands in Q3, 2024

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 LBNN - All rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Politics
  • Markets
  • Crypto
  • Economics
    • Manufacturing
    • Real Estate
    • Infrastructure
  • Finance
  • Energy
  • Creator Economy
  • Wealth Management
  • Taxes
  • Telecoms
  • Military & Defense
  • Careers
  • Technology
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Investigative journalism
  • Art & Culture
  • Documentaries
  • Quizzes
    • Enneagram quiz
  • Newsletters
    • LBNN Newsletter
    • Divergent Capitalist

© 2023 LBNN - All rights reserved.