IN A NONDESCRIPT house on a quiet street in a middle-class suburb of Houston, Texas, Alaa Allawi hunched over his black and gold laptop. It was early 2017, and Allawi ranked among the top 10 vendors on AlphaBay, at the time the dark web's biggest bazaar for all manner of illegal wares. Every week he moved dozens of packages of illegal narcotics: cocaine, counterfeit Xanax, and fake OxyContin.
An order came in from a young marine in North Carolina. He wanted Oxy. Allawi went about fulfilling the order, choosing from among the bags of powders and chemicals strewn about his attic and garage. He had precursor chemicals, binding agents, and colored dyes from eBay, as well as fentanyl-a synthetic opioid 50 times more potent than heroin from China. "Man, you can order anything off the internet," Allawi once told a friend. It was the secret to his success.
Allawi poured the ingredients into a Ninja blender, pulsed it until the contents seemed pretty well mixed, then went outside to the shed in his backyard. Inside were two steel pill presses, each the size of a small fridge and dusted with chalky residue. He tapped the potent mixture into a hopper atop the press, which came alive with the push of a button. Outshot the pills a few minutes later, stamped to look like their prescription counterparts. Soon, the fake OxyContin was ready to be shipped, sealed first in a bag and then stuffed into a parcel. A member of Allawi's crew dropped the order off at the post office, along with a pile of other packages addressed to buyers all over the country.
This story is from the April 2023 edition of WIRED.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the April 2023 edition of WIRED.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
DeLorean vs DeLorean
Decades after her dad's iconic sports car time-traveled into movie history, Kat DeLorean wants to build a modern remake. There's just one problem: Someone else owns the trademark on her name.
THE BEHIND THE SCENES TECHNO-WIZARDRY OF ARATI PRABHAKAR
She has the ear of the US president and a massive mission: help manage AI, revive the semiconductor industry, and pull off a cancer moonshot.
11,196 YEARS IN PRISON
Faruk Özer made crypto seem like the sation to decades of economic dysimction. Then he became Turkey's most wanted-and hated-man.
THE FORENSIC EMPIRE OF ELIOT HIGGINS
As fakes and deceptions proliferate at record speeds, one guy has maintained a miraculous nose for the truth-the founder of Bellingcat, the world's biggest citizen-run intelligence agency.
THE COMMUNIST & THE CELEBRITY
CHINA MIÉVILLE WRITES A NOVEL WITH THE INTERNET'S BOYFRIEND.
DESIRED
WIRED's visit to the intersection of luxury and technology.
SCREEN SAVER
There are still nice things on the internet.
FIXER UPPER
Maybe you think they're majestic. Maybe you think they're an eyesore. No matter how you feel about wind turbines, there'll be a lot more of them in coming years.
DO THE MATH
Learn you a Haskell-the spooky, esoteric cult classic of programming languages
PRETTY IN PINK
Why did scientists put tangerine DNA in a pineapple-and can this Frankenfruit help change public opinion toward bioengineered foods?