To better understand the drug trade on the dark web, Joe Tidy and Alison Benjamin of the BBC made two purchases: ecstasy and cocaine. They also learned how easy it is for drug dealers to keep going, even when the police shut down an online marketplace where they have operated.
At first glance, Torrez was like a normal shopping website: thousands of products listed, customer reviews with star ratings for each seller, information on delivery estimates and payment methods.
The only difference was the products themselves.
Peruvian cocaine in fish flakes, MDMA champagne, Blue Punisher ecstasy pills ... not the kind of items you'd find on Amazon or eBay.
Until a few weeks ago, Torrez was a dark web marketplace where buyers could meet vendors selling everything from drugs and internet hacking tools to counterfeit money and tasers.
It was one of the most popular dark web marketplaces in the world and the BBC became one of its latest clients.
As part of an investigation for BBC Radio 4's File on Four program on the drug trade on the dark web, we used Torrez to buy some ecstasy tablets from a UK dealer.
The purchase
There is a myth that buying drugs on the dark web is as easy as ordering a pizza, but buying the drugs with cryptocurrencies and communicating in an encrypted chat with the seller took hours.
The "super strong" tablets arrived as promised, in a couple of days through the mail.
The three small ecstasy tablets came in an oversized box, an example of "hidden packaging" used to disguise the contents.
A drug dealer's cocaine package bought elsewhere came with a fake bill from a herbal health products company.
The BBC had the drugs tested (they were less strong than we were led to believe) and then a laboratory destroyed them.
LINK: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-59961526