Merced man accused of selling drugs through dark-web markets

A 38-year-old Merced man has been arrested on charges of selling cocaine and marijuana on dark-web markets, including the Silk Road, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

David Ryan Burchard, using the moniker “Caliconnect,” was a “major narcotics vendor on the Silk Road and other dark-web marketplaces,” including Agora, Abraxas, and AlphaBay, U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner said in a news release.

Dark-web marketplaces are operated on computer networks designed to conceal the real Internet Protocol addresses of the computers using the network, authorities said.

Such marketplaces allow payments to be made only in the form of digital currency, most commonly in Bitcoin.

“While not inherently illegal, digital currency is used by dark-web marketplaces because online transactions in digital currency can be completed without a third-party payment processor and are therefore perceived to be more anonymous and less vulnerable to law enforcement scrutiny,” Wagner said.

Burchard is accused of accepting orders for marijuana and cocaine on dark-web marketplaces and mailing the narcotics from post offices in Merced and Fresno County to his customers throughout the United States. He was paid primarily in Bitcoin, the Justice Department said.

Federal authorities say Burchard’s operation was worth more than $1.4 million before the website was shut down, describing him as “one of the largest vendors on the Silk Road.”

Authorities say Burchard transferred his narcotics business to Agora and then to AlphaBay, which are other dark-web marketplaces, once the Silk Road site was shut down.

The investigation was conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation office, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Fresno Police Department, with assistance from attorney Anitha Ibrahim of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section.

This story was originally published March 29, 2016 at 3:35 PM with the headline "Merced man accused of selling drugs through dark-web markets."