Someone in the UK was also raided while the DPR take down was happening (you can find the details on SR forums if you're interested). No charges have been laid against him to date but the list of items SOCA seized runs to 18 pages. According to him, the warrant SOCA had was issued on 16 September - meaning they intentionally delayed executing that warrant until the SR take down was in progress. He also reports that while he was being interviewed, SOCA was being fed questions to ask him by phone (they asked him about "Ross Allbright", so he assumes US authorities were feeding the questions).
What's interest about the UK arrest is that it wasn't a vendor of illegal products. It was someone who ran a head shop and supplied vendors with packaging materials - I guess the authorities were hoping that because the person was selling a legal product they might keep a list of their customers.
He recently reported that the cash seized by SOCA has already been returned to him but that the analysis of the "drugs" they seized will take a few months and that the forensic analysis of his computers will take at least 6-9 months (apparently they're back-logged).
What would you do if you were a seller/buyer?
If you're a big vendor or someone who was using SR to source drugs for distribution, then you'd have to be anxious - no matter how careful you might have been yourself, you can't know for certain that others with whom you dealt were equally cautious. And you'd hope to hell that they don't catch up with whoever was laundering your SR income for you.
Anyone who buys into the narrative of federal agents being old guys in suits who couldn't possibly understand technology is an idiot - as is anyone who ever assumed that their communications on SR were ever "private" in any meaningful sense.
