The Great 420 Scam « All Things VICE

Tony76, "the most trusted vendor on Silk Road" scams his heroin buyers for ~250,000 USD, then vanishes. #bitcoin

A drug dealer ripping off customers? The nerve! Tony76 got to keep the money AND the drugs… Silk Road, as I reported previously, is the online illicit drug marketplace that has defied law enforcement efforts to close it down. Last month, Silk Road reported the greatest scam in its fifteen-month history, which cost the site’s users over a hundred thousand dollars in just two days. Silk Road’s vendors live and die by their reputation and feedback, which buyers give much as they do on eBay. Nobody on Silk Road had a better reputation or more enthusiastic feedback than Tony76, a vendor of heroin, stimulants and psychedelics from Canada. The site has a system of escrow in place – a user places an order, money goes into escrow and the user releases it once the order has been received. Any disputes can be referred to the site’s administrators for resolution. However, ‘trusted ven...

Full article: http://allthingsvice.com/2012/05/30/the-great-420-scam/