Tag: social media drugs

Illegal Drug Sales & Social Media

Social Media companies are still being challenged for not doing enough when it comes to selling drugs on their platforms. Snap Chat, Instagram, Tik Tok and others have been sited for not doing enough to curb illegal drug sales on their sites. Parents, in particular, are passionate about this issue. With the rise of Fentanyl, the online sales of fake pills that include the synthetic opioid is staggering. The dealers use social media to advertise to young people. So even if a young person isn’t interested in mining social media for a drug of choice, the dealers come to them.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) issued a warning back in September 2021, warning about the increase. Anne Milgram, the DEA Administrator, called out two apps that were very popular with teens and young adults: Snapchat and TikTok. She was quoted in the Washington Post that they were not doing enough to combat sales. But will the request go unnoticed?

This has been occurring for years on several social platforms. Many of the platform executives have said they are doing all they can on their end. Companies have hired extra moderators, using artificial – intelligence algorithms to flag unwanted posts. To date it continues to be an issue as many young people are dying from this type of drug.

To date, more than 93,000 people died of drug overdoses in the US in 2020. This is an increase of 30% from 2019.

CDC

The Advertising of Illegal Drugs to teens and young adults. 

Illegal Drug Word Cloud

The Organization for Social Media Safety, ran an informal test and found they were able to connect with drug dealers on multiple social media sites in under three minutes.

Volteface commissioned Survation in January 2019 to conduct a nationally representative poll of 2,006, 16 to 24 year olds.  The research was conducted on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Fake profiles were set up and researchers did not communicate with any social media users.  Key findings were as followed:

  • One in four young people (24%) reported they see illicit drugs advertised for sale on social media.
  • Of those who reported seeing illicit drugs for sale on social media:

56% saw drugs being advertised on Snapchat, 55% on Instagram and 47% on Facebook.

63% saw Cannabis being advertised – making it the most seen drug advertised for sale. Cocaine was the second drug most seen advertised (26%), followed by MDMA/Ecstasy (24%), Xanax (20%), Nitrous Oxide (17%) and Codeine/Lean (16%).

Encryption and VPN technology makes it difficult to trace dealers. There is also a lack of information sharing between police and social media platforms. All of this makes it very hard to get this off social media.

Searching for Drugs Online: (American Addiction Centers: Drug Abuse.com )

Think it is hard to find illegal drugs in social media? You might be very surprised to discover that people are selling drugs in the most blatant fashion. In fact, even their user names make it obvious! With user names like “ihavedrugs4sale”, and drug-riddled posts/pictures, the dealers make it quite obvious. The study revealed that the most popular items included marijuana, prescription drugs, painkillers, xanax, molly (mdma) and lean (codeine syrup mixture). Example below of items found in social media:

Illegal Drugs Online

This year a Santa Monica teen, named Sammy Berman Chapman asked his dad for a cheeseburger and went to his bedroom. An hour later his mother found him dead on the floor.

Sammy was killed by a Xanax pill laced with fentanyl, which is a synthetic opioid 50 times as powerful as heroin. The culprit: a drug dealer on Snapchat and, from the parents’ perspective, the company Snap itself, which they said was not doing enough to protect young users like Sammy. They went to the company for answers on how this could happen. Snapchat’s rep stated:

“Continuing to significantly improve our operational work to eradicate drug dealers from Snapchat, along with raising awareness of the dangers of fentanyl and other illicit drugs, will be a long term effort for us — we will keep working to do better and help keep our community safe,” said a Snapchat spokesperson.

It is an uphill battle, but one that is worth fighting for.

Buying Drugs on Instagram: It’s easier than you think

Thought Instagram was for showing off selfies or sharing pics of your vacation in order to be the envy of your friends?

Apparently not…it’s now become the ideal place to connect with drug dealers. The word “obvious” is an understatement for how these dealers operate. With usernames like “ihavedrugs4sale” and drug-riddled posts/pictures, these users eagerly flaunt their offerings. The most popular items in their stock usually include marijuana, prescription painkillers, Xanax, molly (mdma), and lean (codeine syrup mixure).

For those struggling with drug addiction, this presents a huge problem. As the Washington Post reports, searching for the hashtags #oxy, #percocet, #painkillers, #painpills, #oxycontin, #adderall, and #painrelief will return a plethora of posts from Instagram users. Those users may be struggling with addiction, partying like it’s nobody’s business, or dealing the hashtagged drugs online. 

The problem is Instagram’s algorithms can’t distinguish the context the hashtags are used in. And if a user then follows a dealer using the hashtags, Instagram’s algorithms then suggest that user follow more drug dealers. In the course of one day over 50 Instagram dealer accounts were found simply be searching for different hashtags like #weed4sale.

So how does the process work? It will surprise you, or maybe appall, at how simple it is.

Selling Drugs in Social Media

Most dealer profiles have a bunch or “product” photos displaying their inventory and their contact information is in the bio or comments section. While some bravely post their mobile number, most use a messaging app called Kik. No phone numbers or personal info is exchanged here, only user to user messaging.


How are orders fulfilled? It’s as easy as ordering on Amazon. And sometimes faster.


You simply send a message with the product you are interested in purchasing and the dealer responds. Most dealers use wire transfer and can ship out the same day if you send money fast enough.
For what it’s worth, the ability to be connected with drug dealers via social media isn’t a problem unique to Instagram. The same types of posts are widespread on Facebook (which owns Instagram) and Twitter. In recent months Instagram has blocked search results for certain hashtags, such as #fentanyl, #cocaine, and #heroin, all illegal substances. But dealers simply switch to hashtagging their posts with legal drug names, or slightly tweaked the spelling of drug names–and then proceeding to sell both legal and illegal drugs to Instagram users when they connect with them outside of the platform.


Yet still, Instagram’s owner Facebook says it’s aware of the problem and is working to put a stop to the sale of illegal drugs through Instagram, though its initiatives are still in the “early stages.”

As Facebook’s vice president for global marketing solutions, Carolyn Everson, told the Washington Post:
“We’re not yet sophisticated enough to tease apart every post to see if it’s trying to sell someone illegal drugs or they are taking Xanax [because] they are stressed out. Obviously, there is some stuff that gets through that is totally against our policy, and we’re getting better at it.”


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Social Media Helps Solve Cases

Do criminals want social media likes so badly that they will incriminate themselves? Apparently so.

Last week a cocaine dealer’s student girlfriend helped police bust a major drug ring by bragging about her luxury lifestyle on Instagram. Emily Lock, 22, of Llanbradach, Caerphilly, earned less than $10,000 as a checkout worker at Lidl, but openly flashed designer clothes, shoes and extravagant holidays. Along with her dealer boyfriend Mark Price, 27, they spent over $100,000 on foreign travel and high end goods. So that has authorities wondering where did they get that kind of cash? Drugs maybe?

Lock and Price, who claimed to be a struggling builder, repeatedly purchased Vivienne Westwood handbags, Gucci sunglasses, Christian Louboutin shoes and Christian Dior perfume. She ended up being jailed for 15 months and landed her boyfriend behind bars for seven years.

 

Check out these other not-so-bright crooks who incriminated themselves with their posts.

1) Conor Murphy, 19, posted a picture of himself on Facebook eating a ‘Cash Sandwich’. The pictures would eventually lead police to connect him to an eight-man gang who stole a fleet of expensive, high-performance cars from some of London’s wealthiest residents. They stole BMWs, Range Rovers, Porsches and a $100,000 Mercedes – as well as jewelry, phones and laptops in 15 separate burglaries. Detectives finally caught them after one of the gang members posted a picture of himself on Facebook sitting on the hood of a stolen black Range Rover.

2) Leon Roberts, 38, and Jade Muzoka, 27, claimed damages after their weeks’ vacation in Turkey. The couple alleged they both suffered from food poisoning and tried to collect around $3,000 compensation. But just days after returning home the bodybuilders uploaded 79 photos on social media bragging about their trip, including pictures of them guzzling drinks and dining on steak, lobster and sushi.

In a doctor’s note they claimed to have been bedridden with vomiting and diarrhea, but their pictures proved otherwise. Luckily, the images they posted saved the resort from having to pay over $2,500 in alleged damages. They were busted and given a 26-week jail sentence and ordered to serve 200 hours community service.

 

social media crime

3) Drug dealer Junior Francis, 33, boasted about his extravagant lifestyle on social media before being caught with $7,000 cash and $75,000 worth of crack cocaine and heroin during a home raid. Francis posted pictures online of him posing with wads of cash pressed like a telephone to the side of his face. In an Instagram post he quoted rapper Notorious BIG, writing ‘everything I got I work hard for it’ under a picture showing thousands of pounds in cash on a kitchen top. Smart, right?

He initially denied any involvement in drug dealing during an interview after the home raid but when police checked his mobile phone, they found evidence of transactions with street level dealers in south London. Francis was jailed for six years and eight months after admitting possession with intent to supply Class A drugs and money laundering.

 

4) The mysterious murder case of a Canadian girl was solved after police found clues in the Facebook selfie posted by her friend. Brittney Gargol, 18, was found dead near a landfill in March 2015 and an autopsy later revealed that she died of strangulation. Gargol’s friend Cheyenne Antoine, 21, plead guilty to manslaughter after they found a Facebook selfie showing her wearing the belt used to strangle her friend. The wide blue woven belt with a large buckle was found on a roadside next to Gargol’s body, and Antoine was seen wearing the same belt in a photo posted to her Facebook account just hours before the killing, according to the Saskatoon Star Phoenix.

Investigators got suspicious of Antoine when she initially told them about spending time with the victim the night she died, but left her friend to visit her uncle. That statement was later proven false. Antoine then told investigators that she and Gargol partied with two men, who allegedly strangled the victim and put a gun to her head to help them. The second statement was also proven false.

“It’s quite remarkable how the police developed this information,” prosecutor Robin Ritter said in court adding that Antoine poses a threat to public safety. She “has issues … and because of those issues, she is dangerous.” At her court appearance Monday, Antoine’s lawyer, Lisa Watson, said her client suffered through sexual, emotional and physical abuse as she grew up in foster care. “My client had some very deep-seeded personal issues that she was not dealing with and unfortunately, for whatever reason, we’ll never know, they turned into a very tragic situation for all involved,” Watson said.