As pharmacies across the UK struggled to get hold of the medication, an illicit black market selling semaglutide “diet kits” began to flourish online. A BBC investigation found unregulated sellers offering semaglutide as a medicine, without prescription, online. Betting illegally in-person could add an additional £1.6bn in black market stakes, the report claims, as 4.4% of respondents admitted to gambling illegally in person. This would bring the total size of the illegal market to $4.7bn each year. Illegal gambling is not just about evading regulations; it is also a tool for financial crime.
The stolen goods were then redistributed into illegitimate supply chains and sold on within days. These include blocking payments to black market operators through payment services providers to force them out of the market. A Canadian market established in 2021, WTN offers over 9,000 products, including narcotics, fake goods, and digital services.
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These pop-up scams are designed to take advantage of unsuspecting gamblers, and once they vanish, there is little recourse for those scammed. This is where sites that review online casinos and offer casinos comparison tools, such as onlinecasinoreports.co.uk or similar, come into play. They verify online casinos completely independently, which can save you from a very common nightmare. The rise of cryptocurrencies, which are increasingly accepted, has played a significant role in the expansion of the black gambling market.
- They also demonstrate the lengths to which authorities will go to shut down illegal activities.
- Launched in 2020, Cypher Marketplace sells fraudulent documents, stolen credit cards, fake IDs, and malware.
- Transactions in black markets often aim to avoid taxes, evade regulatory measures, or trade in prohibited items.
- Transactions occur without taxation, leading to revenue losses for governments.
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These platforms sell everything from drugs and fake IDs to weapons and hacking tools, resembling a digital black-market bazaar. Of those that play on both legal and illegal gambling sites, it found around 12% of their wallet was spent with illegal operators, totalling £2bn a year. This could amount to tax losses of up to £335m over the course of a five-year parliament, the report warned. The survey was carried out with the aim to better understand how UK gamblers are accessing the illegal gambling market, marking the first major study on the black market since the release of the previous government’s white paper in May 2023.
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But regulators told the BBC’s Newsbeat service that a “small scale” black market for the medicines is emerging. Launched after the takedown of AlphaBay in 2021, Abacus Market has rapidly risen to prominence. It features over 40,000 listings including narcotics, counterfeit items, hacking tools, and stolen data. The marketplace is well-known for its bug bounty programs and robust security mechanisms, including mandatory 2FA.
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But it’s also being used “off-label” to help people lose weight, with celebrities like Elon Musk saying the injectable has helped them shed pounds. While large retailers may be able to absorb the costs, smaller independent businesses operating on tighter margins suffer more. And this is coming at a time when small businesses will be feeling the pressure of new import control charges of up to £145 on even small consignments of some foods from the EU.
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Cryptocurrencies provide a degree of anonymity and are decentralized, making it harder for authorities to trace transactions. Tor (The Onion Router) is a browser designed to anonymize your online activities. It bounces your communications through a network of volunteer nodes around the world, making it extremely difficult to trace your actions back to you. You can sell smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, headphones, earphones, and speakers through Trade-in. There’s a lot of trash out there, but when it comes to tech a lot of it isn’t. Refurbishers will restore your old electronics to perfect working condition so that any tech you sell can live its best reborn life.
“We have responsibility for regulating the supply chain, and it is our absolute priority to make sure that supply chain is secure.” It says there are further investigations linked to organised crime groups in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. An intelligence report seen by the BBC describes an illicit distribution network centred in the north west of England, running through the Potteries, to the Midlands and on to London. Commissioned by the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC), this analysis adds to an evidence base that allows regulators to enact vital change on this issue.
And then there’s malware—click the wrong link or download the wrong file, and your device could get infected. In 2019, there were approximately 8,400 active sites on the dark web, selling thousands of products and services daily. Mr Dennis sells the unlicensed drug on social media, encouraging buyers to message him on WhatsApp to place an order. Drugs manufacturer Novo Nordisk is the only company approved to sell and market semaglutide, branded as Ozempic and Wegovy, in the UK, but it is now battling against knock-off online sales. Although most of the products contained semaglutide, vials from two different sellers had no semaglutide in them at all, and nearly all of them, including the one bought from the Lip King, did not contain the full dose that had been paid for. Hurst called for tougher enforcement against the black market as the government and regulator “risked sleepwalking into the issue”.
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Launched in 2020, Cypher Marketplace sells fraudulent documents, stolen credit cards, fake IDs, and malware. Its emphasis on user anonymity and document forgery makes it a core tool for identity fraud. Founded in 2014, BriansClub remains one of the oldest and most infamous dark web markets for stolen credit cards, fullz (complete identity kits), and dumps. In some cases, the criminals used fake documents to pose as genuine dealers. But in others pharmacists were approached directly and offered payment to order and supply the drugs.
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The coroner at Katie’s inquest confirmed her GP had not been contacted by any of the pharmacies to check the drug was safe for her. The BBC’s findings highlight the “wild west” of buying medicines on the web, says Thorrun Govind, a pharmacist, health lawyer and former chair of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. Data suggests that almost 40 percent of the revenue from drug sales on the dark web is from marijuana. The next most popular drugs, making up about 30 percent of sales, are stimulants like cocaine and amphetamines. Most web users spend their time on the surface web which makes up only a small fraction (an estimated five percent) of the internet.
She said she decided to sell her supplies because her doctor moved her to another drug, but her Ozempic prescription had not been stopped. She said she had another three pens in her fridge – claiming she bought them in Greece during a shortage in the UK – and could supply these and her monthly prescription dose until it ended in September. NHS Medical Director Steve Powis said that the drugs could help tackle obesity, high rates of which “can have devastating consequences for the nation’s health” and put “significant pressure” on healthcare services. Back in July, campaigners warned people with diabetes were missing out on the drug as doctors prescribed it “off-label” for weight loss. This week, police arrested a man suspected of selling the drug illegally online after raiding a house in the north of England.
Mr Parke is one of many illicit sellers peddling semaglutide through social media. To find out what is actually in the drugs, the BBC bought unlicensed semaglutide from several sellers and had them tested in the lab. BGC CEO Grainne Hurst said the survey’s results were shocking and exposed “the unnerving true scale of the growing, unsafe, unregulated gambling black market”. According to investigations by The Guardian and The Mail on Sunday, several online pharmacies in different countries offer similar drugs to UK customers without a prescription.
Web traffic and average visit duration data for each of the unlicensed sites is then collated. It expects the research will help improve and scale its online monitoring of the black market, as well as providing a starting point for the Gambling Commission to understand the scale of it. Several marketplaces dominate the dark web, each with its own reputation and range of goods.
This evasion allows operators to offer goods and services at prices that often undercut legitimate businesses, creating unfair competition. The unregulated environment introduces substantial risks for both buyers and sellers. There is no legal recourse for disputes, no quality control, and no consumer protection, leaving participants vulnerable to fraud, substandard products, and potential violence. The use of crypto for gambling transactions has skyrocketed in recent years. A 2023 report by Chainalysis found that illicit cryptocurrency gambling transactions increased by 64% in 2022, with billions of dollars moving through dark web casinos and black market operators.
