In India, authorities have arrested a drug trafficker who was using the cryptocurrency Monero (XMR) for his illegal activities. We take a closer look.
Monero (XMR) used to buy LSD and ketamine
This week, Indian media reported the arrest of a drug trafficker who was using the anonymity of Monero (XMR) for his activities. The 35-year-old accused, known as Edison, ran the Ketamelon “network,” which operated on the dark web to ship LSD and ketamine to India.
On June 28, police launched Operation MELON, which led to the arrest of the suspect and the seizure of 130 grams of ketamine, more than 1,100 doses of LSD, and approximately $82,000 in USDT.
As this is the second largest LSD seizure in the country, an agent from the Narcotics Control Bureau of India (NCB) gave some details of the trafficker’s modus operandi to local media outlet The New Indian Express:
Edison ordered large quantities of LSD on the darknet. He used fake addresses and SIM cards to avoid arrest in case the package containing the drugs was detected by law enforcement. Later, upon arrival, he went directly to the courier service and picked up the package. Similarly, fake IDs and SIM cards from the dark web were used to send drugs to people who had ordered them on the dark web.
In a post on X, the NCB shows Ketamelon ads accepting payments in XMR:
Unlike other cryptocurrencies, Monero’s XMR has the advantage of anonymity. While a source told The New Indian Express that this cryptocurrency is “widely used by terrorist organizations and international drug trafficking networks to transfer money,” this should be put into perspective.
Indeed, while such cases tend to perpetuate the famous cliché of cryptocurrencies financing drug trafficking, it should be remembered that XMR has a market capitalization of only $5.9 billion, an amount which, despite its significance, makes the asset too illiquid for large-scale operations.
More broadly, illicit transactions across all sectors accounted for 0.14% of all on-chain crypto transactions in 2024, according to a Chainalysis survey.
