Week 10 EOC: illicit the dark trade

With advancing technology in today's world, there have been many benefits created for us in order to make our lives easier. Today, we are able to communicate with other people across the world with the click of a button. However, there have been several people that have taken advantage of this technology. These people have used our technology in order to expand dark trades from the streets to across the nation. One of the dark trades I found was www.napsgear.net. It is a website that provides online sales of illegal performance enhancement steroids. The website has everything from testosterone boosters to red blood cell modifiers. After looking at the website, I found that the process was a bit complicated to purchase the supplements. I assume that this was a security measure used to cover the online criminal's tracks. The way it works is that the user scrolls through the different performance enhancement steroids until the person finds the one he/she wants. Once the online submission goes through, the user will be put on "pending" status. At this point, the user has a certain time frame to place a western union on their own convenience with the prescribed name, address, and amount that was listed on the website. Once the western union is complete, the user will log back into their "pending" status and type in the western union confirmation number. www.napsgear.net will then use that confirmation number to ensure the money went through and change the user's "pending" status into "shipped" status. The user will have a couple weeks waiting time until the shipment arrives at their doorstep. I found it hard to believe that customers felt comfortable with this process because the entire thing seemed kind of shady.