Dark web drug runner pleads over $250,000 MDMA import racket

A YOUNG Darwin man who trafficked more than $250,000 worth of ecstasy from overseas via the dark web will spend Christmas behind bars after his bail was revoked

Drugs seized by police in a raid targeting dark web trafficker Declan Reid in April

A YOUNG Darwin man who trafficked more than $250,000 worth of ecstasy from overseas via the dark web will spend Christmas behind bars after his bail was revoked.

Declan Athol Reid, 23, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court on Friday to a string of charges including importing a commercial quantity of MDMA analogues from his bedroom.

Crown prosecutor Damien Jones told the court Reid ordered the drugs in quantities of up to a kilogram at a time and bought parcel lockers under fake names to have them delivered to.

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Despite facing a maximum penalty of life in prison, Reid’s lawyer Peter Maley, argued he should be let off with a suspended sentence, saying he was “under a haze of drugs” at the time.

Mr Maley said Reid’s illicit purchases over the dark web were done “in a dark room with a computer between playing computer games” for “astoundingly low” prices.

He said Reid had since moved back in with his mother who kept him on a tight leash and now regularly went horse riding and to the gym with his brothers after completing residential rehab.

“It is difficult to think of a young man who has done more to try and turn his life around since these events,” he said.

Mr Maley said while he acknowledged the court was bound by law not to take Reid’s rehabilitation as its primary consideration in sentencing, “there might be some change in the wind” with drugs being increasingly decriminalised around the world.

“I think the tide is turning a little, I think the war on drugs is coming to an end and I think people are realising that it’s a bit more insidious and there’s a medical aspect to many of these behaviours,” he said.

“I’m asking for some mercy on behalf of this young man.”

But Mr Jones said Reid was not a young man “dabbling a little bit” in the darker corners of the internet.

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“People utilise the dark web because law enforcement find it extremely difficult or near impossible to detect,” he said.

“It masks IP addresses, it uses end to end encryption, it is specifically designed to not be detected.

“The offender could have been under no illusions at all as to what that platform does, it’s not just an illicit market for drugs it’s an illicit market for everything.”

Reid was remanded in custody and returns to court for sentencing on January 12.

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