Adelaide drug dealers delivering direct to schools via encrypted Telegram app

Kids as young as 12 across Adelaide can order illegal drugs via a popular encrypted messaging app, an investigation has found – even when they’re at school.

Children as young as 12 are buying MDMA and cocaine off an encrypted social media app – and some drug dealers are offering to drop off the drugs at schools, an investigation by The Advertiser has found.

The Advertiser went on to a social media messaging app Telegram and posed as an underage high school student, engaging with four drug dealers who had advertised their illicit items on group pages.

The four all believed they were dealing with someone aged between 14 and 16, all of them offered to deliver hundreds of dollars worth of MDMA (ecstasy) or cocaine.

The Advertiser purported to be underage to one man on the platform who then referred us to a cocaine dealer with a handle including the name “cokeyboy”.

When The Advertiser claimed to be 15, “cokeyboy” said “all g” before agreeing to sell hundreds of dollars worth of MDMA rock.

Screenshots from the conversations.

Screenshots from the conversations.

The dealer then agreed to drop off the drugs within three hours at a school carpark during class time.

An Adelaide high school teacher told The Advertiser students as young as 12 were being caught under the influence of drugs at his school. He said many were buying from dealers on the encrypted social media app.

Screenshots from the conversations.

“A lot of them provide delivery within half-hour to an hour they’re very willing to sell to under-age and those in school uniform,” the teacher said.

“One individual even parked in the staff parking area.”

The teacher, who wanted to remain anonymous, said access to the social media group came via word of mouth.

“My high school students are able to purchase nicotine vapes off these chats and are then getting offered other products – more illicit products such as MDMA or cocaine,” he said.

The teacher said that sometimes the students didn’t know what they were taking and often spent a day or more “knocked out” because they thought they were taking stimulants but were actually taking heavy duty tranquillisers.

An anonymous source from the technology sector said organised crime groups were often involved in drug trafficking on the apps.

“The international nature of these crime organisations makes it hard to stop,” he said.

He said that it is near impossible to stop people downloading Telegram as they can just get an VPN or the dark web to find new versions of it if Apple or Google removes the app.

“The barrier to setting up one of these applications is relatively low, so people can just set up a new app if another disappears” the source said.

He said “encryption” doesn’t just mean messages disappear for users, it means that data is not stored in the platform.

Stan Karanasios, associate professor in Information Systems at the University of Queensland Business School, said the most used encrypted social media apps in Australia have age restrictions, but there is no verification process.

He said the proposed social ban social media for children under 14 by Australian governments may work in stopping use of the apps “but enforcing the proposed ban will be difficult, both technically and from a governance perspective”.

Detective Superintendent Julie Foley, from SA Police’s financial and cybercrime investigation branch, acknowledged “the alarming trend of controlled substances being sold on various online platforms”.

Ms Foley said police were working with the national eSafety Commission to raise awareness, educate the public, and combat online drug sales.

The Advertiser did not purchase any of the drugs, nor meet up with any of the dealers with whom we had discussions on the platform.

Originally published as Adelaide drug dealers delivering direct to schools via encrypted Telegram app