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Dark web drug market operator sentenced to 40 years, forfeits $101 million in bitcoin

A man from Virginia, who facilitated millions of drug transactions worth roughly $430 million, agreed to give up $100 million worth of BTC. His partner forfeited nearly 1,600 BTC.

A co-creator of dark web drug enterprise Empire Market agreed to forfeit 1,230 bitcoin ($101 million), after receiving a 40-year federal prison sentence for his role in operating the site.

His co-conspirator Thomas Pavey forfeited 1,584 bitcoin last year.

Raheim Hamilton, 30, of Suffolk, Virginia, also agreed to forfeit 24.4 ether worth about $60,000 and three properties, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois. A federal judge in Chicago sentenced Hamilton on Monday and imposed a $5 million fine.

Hamilton and Pavey operated Empire Market from 2018 to 2020. Their site facilitated more than 4 million drug transactions worth upwards of $430 million, prosecutors said. They also said Hamilton and Pavey sold stolen account credentials, personal data, counterfeit currency and hacking tools.

Pavey, 41, of Ormond Beach, Florida, pleaded guilty last year to a federal drug conspiracy charge and admitted his role in creating and operating Empire Market. He also gave up his rights to two boxes containing 25-ounce gold bars, three automobiles, and two properties in Florida. Pavey is set to be sentenced later this month.

The pair required customers to use cryptocurrency and encouraged them to use mixing services to obscure the movement of funds, the Justice Department said. Prosecutors said drug sales accounted for nearly $375 million of the site’s total activity.

Ruis-Sian Lin, the alleged operator of the dark web narcotics marketplace Incognito Market, was sentenced to 30 years in U.S. federal prison in February.

A month earlier, the U.S. government seized $400 million worth of cryptocurrency, real estate and cash linked to the once-popular darknet bitcoin mixing service Helix, which, according to the Department of Justice, was used by drug traffickers and other criminals to launder money at the tune of at least 354,468 bitcoin worth $29 billion today.

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Here’s One October Surprise, Anyway…

“The Left has always preferred the ashes of its own making to the inheritance of better men.” – Celina101 on X

By now, everybody and his uncle interested in public matters has probably read that a claque of current-and-former agency officials, ex-USAID busybodies, military officers, activist academics, Democratic Party paladins, and freelance communist jihadis has been exposed plotting the overthrow of the US government. The plot was reported by the diligent “X” blogger Jennica Pounds under her nom-de-plume “Data Republican,” who lately received an enormous document-and-recording dump courtesy of careless color revolutionaries who recorded themselves and saved doc files against orders, the dumb bunnies.

Ms. Pounds, an experienced software engineer turned political detective, came to public attention early in 2025 when she assisted Elon Musk’s DOGE operation in building a database of NGO money trails emanating from the colossal USAID grant matrix – after which her identity was “doxed” by Rolling Stone and she underwent a harassment campaign.

Of course, USAID was abolished early in the Trump 2.0 admin, and a lot of the “activists” defenestrated from it moved into scores of NGOs, with their salaries switched from taxpayer funding to the bank accounts of George Soros-connected orgs and sundry other shady characters like Shanghai-based Neville Roy Singham. These are the NGOs forever puling about “our democracy,” meaning their drive to punish, persecute, and push around Americans who demur from a communist future. Data Republican says her reporting so far is “only the beginning” of much more detailed and alarming disclosures.

Coincidentally this week, their cover was also blown by Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI and former CIA analyst), who told an audience at the U. of Chicago that the Democrats intend to go after and wreck any young person who might think about working in the current administration. Ms. Slotkin, you might recall, was in that video put out a year ago – with five other US lawmakers – telling military officers they should-and-must refuse “illegal” orders. Sedition-lite, it looked like at the time.

Before we get into the meat of their playbook for us, and what might happen in response, let’s just dox a few of the characters involved. You should know who they are (and maybe the DOJ should, too). They are not necessarily the usual suspects you’ve read about before like the omnipresent lawfare ninjas, Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, Mary McCord, et al., so busy filing frivolous lawsuits in the federal courts.

For instance (as reported by one Eric Schwalm on “X”), there’s Erica Chenoweth, the transvestite professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of government who acts as chief strategist and hub for the “color revolution” planned by the United Democracy Alliance cabal she is associated with. Ms. (or Mr.?) Chenoweth’s big contribution to Jacobin thought is “the 3.5 rule” which says that if you can get that percentage of people out on the streets making a ruckus, you can successfully overthrow a government.

Then there’s Danielle Reiff, former USAID, now co-founder of the Democracy Renewal Group, Renew American Democracy, and Renew to Thrive orgs. . . very verbal on video laying out the exact procedures for the US color revolution. And there’s Rear Admiral Michael E. Smith (Ret.) who runs a network of over a thousand retired military officers called National Security Leaders for America. He’s in charge of “role-playing” exercises in preparation for post-election hijinks. Then there’s Julia Roig, founder of the Horizons Project who is responsible for “building relational infrastructure so that disparate groups can act in concert without a single hierarchical command.” Then there’s Maria Stephan, co-author, with Erica Chenoweth, of the sedition tract Why Civil Resistance Works. Then there’s Brenden Halloran, former USAID, now with the Renew to Thrive org, responsible for “accountability ecosystems, overcoming fragmentation among groups, and long-term sequencing of reforms.” Then there’s Walt Roberts, also on the Renew to Thrive team, plus the Mediators Foundation and the Inter-Movement Impact Project. Then there’s Laura Adams, also former USAID, now in Renew to Thrive and PACT, whose mission is to turn strategy papers into operational plans. Then there’s Zoe Marks, also in Harvard’s Kennedy School, a “scenario-planner” for Horizons and United Democracy Alliance. Then there’s “cohesion” strategist Paul Zeitz, co-founder of UnifyUSA, partner with Danielle Reiff on Renew to Thrive, and active in NGOs Renew to Thrive and National Security Leaders for America. There’s the bunch. Now you know.

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Zohran Mamdani Instructs Illegal Migrants How to Dodge ICE

New York City’s (NYC) socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani advised illegal aliens on how to dodge U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and instructed them on their rights.

In a video posted to X with English subtitles, Mamdani, speaking in Spanish, explained that ICE agents “cannot legally enter” private spaces unless they have a judicial order, and that illegal migrants have the right to be silent.

“If you encounter ICE, these are your rights,” Mamdani said. “First, ICE cannot legally enter private spaces without a judicial order. These spaces include your home, hospitals, churches, and private areas of your workplace.”

Mamdani continued to explain that on documents, the illegal aliens should keep an eye out for the words, “United States District Court” and for a judge’s signature. The NYC mayor added that if the agents “don’t have a judicial order,” they can state that they “do not consent” to the ICE agents entering.

“Second, you have the right to remain silent. If ICE stops you on the street, ask, ‘Am I free to go?’ If the agent says yes, walk away calmly. Speak with a lawyer before signing any documents or making any decisions about your immigration status or case,” Mamdani continued. “Third, you are not alone. Anyone can call the city’s immigration legal support line.”

Breitbart News previously reported that Mamdani, who “used his citizenship to win the city’s mayoralty at the head of a ‘Red/Green’ coalition of migrants, Muslims” and progressives, has referred to criminal illegal aliens as being New Yorkers:

Mamdani’s declaration means he is forcing Americans in New York to share their civic spaces, culture-setting ability, limited economic resources, and political power with all foreigners who sneak into the city. That demand is shared by an increasing number of Democrats.

Mamdani is a Ugandan-born Muslim who got citizenship after his foreign-born parents brought him to the Unite States at age seven in 1991. He used his citizenship to win the city’s mayoralty at the head of a “Red/Green” coalition of migrants, Muslims, progressives, college graduates, Latinos, and blacks.

In a letter with roughly “100 Democrat officials across the sanctuary state,” Mamdani requested that “parking lot and parking garage owners” inform ICE agents that they are not welcome. The letter came after Oscar Belgal, a criminal illegal alien, “tried to use his vehicle to run down and injure or kill ICE agents who were trying to arrest him,” Breitbart News reported.

Mamdani’s comments advising illegal aliens on how to dodge ICE agents comes as Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials along with New York state officials “raided dozens of adult care centers” as part of an investigation regarding Medicaid fraud, according to Fox5NY.

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Federal Court Says No ‘Get Out of Jail’ Card for Illegal Aliens

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that illegal immigrants detained inside the United States have no constitutional right to a bond hearing, no matter how long they have lived in the country.

A bond hearing allows detained migrants to ask an immigration judge for release on bond while their immigration cases proceed.

In a 10-7 decision, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans reversed a lower panel and sided with the Trump administration. The ruling closed the main legal route that judges in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi had used to free detained migrants who challenged how long they were being held.

The ruling backs a policy, put in place last year, that lets the government hold immigrants arrested in the interior until their deportation cases end, without giving them a chance to argue for release before a judge. It is a sharp break from how previous administrations handled such cases, when migrants who were not flight risks or dangers could often post bond.

Writing for the majority, Judge Cory Wilson, a Trump appointee, said the men challenging their detention were still legally seeking admission to the country and were not entitled to a hearing on due-process grounds. The judge wrote that they could end their confinement “at any moment by agreeing to leave the country.”

The three men at the center of the case came from Mexico and Honduras, have U.S.-citizen children, and were picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after traffic stops. One of them had lived in the United States for more than 22 years.

In a concurring opinion, Judge James Ho said the court was defending basic national authority. “A nation ceases to be a nation if it can’t protect its borders,” he wrote, adding that the dissenting judges would hand illegal immigrants an incentive to settle in the country unlawfully.

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Measles Surge In Pennsylvania Prompts New Warning

As the measles outbreak in Pennsylvania grows larger, state officials have issued a warning regarding the impact of measles during pregnancy.

“Measles in pregnancy can lead to serious adverse maternal and fetal outcomes. The measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine is safe and highly effective,” the Pennsylvania Department of Health said in an Oct. 19 health alert. “Getting vaccinated BEFORE pregnancy is the best way to prevent measles and congenital measles.”

More cases of measles have been recorded recently during pregnancy, and there are “rising concerns” about congenital measles, or measles transmitted to infants from pregnant mothers, the department said.

Women and teenagers in outbreak areas should receive two doses of the MMR vaccine, separated by 28 days, according to the department. Other women should be offered one dose.

Women should take care not to become pregnant for at least 28 days after receiving a shot.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that pregnant women should not receive the MMR vaccine. Pennsylvania’s guidance says the vaccine should not be administered during pregnancy.

Infants born to women who had measles are at risk for symptomatic and transmissible measles infection, Pennsylvania officials said. Infants should be isolated, monitored, and provided with immune globulin, which could prevent measles or reduce symptoms.

Infants showing symptoms within 10 days of birth, such as rash, should be tested, and treatment should include vitamin A, since vitamin A deficiency has been linked with poorer outcomes from measles, they said.

Cases Jump in State

After the alert, Pennsylvania officials said the outbreak’s case count rose to 1,317.

Thirty-one of those cases were new, according to the Oct. 21 update.

All but four of those individuals had not received a vaccine, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

Five people who contracted measles have died. That includes at least one death that a coroner deemed unrelated to measles.

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Tribunal Watch: Quebec tribunal upholds federally funded job ad that excluded white applicants, calls complainant’s position “ideological”

A Quebec Human Rights Tribunal judge has dismissed a complaint against a bird conservation group whose federally funded job posting was open only to applicants aged 30 or under who identify as Indigenous, black or a person of colour.

Judge Magali Lewis ruled that the posting was discriminatory on its face, but that it was not discriminatory under Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms because it came from a government “ameliorative” program. She also ruled that the complainant, Stéphanie Salagan, never really intended to apply and had no standing to sue. The decision, 2026 QCTDP 7, was issued March 12, 2026.

In October 2021, Regroupement QuébecOiseaux advertised a 20-week, part-time project officer job promoting Nature Canada’s “Bird Friendly City” certification. The job paid $17.50 an hour for 28 hours a week. The ad said that, because the funding program aimed to promote diversity, the position was open only to people 30 and under who identify as Indigenous, black or people of colour.

(Quotes from the decision are translated from French.)

According to the decision, QuébecOiseaux had 12 employees at the time: 11 white women and one biologist of South American origin.

The money came through a chain of federal programs. Employment and Social Development Canada runs the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy. Under it, Parks Canada signed a contribution agreement with Nature Canada in June 2021. Nature Canada then launched a wage subsidy program called Work to Grow and encouraged QuébecOiseaux to apply.

The approval email from Nature Canada dictated the sentence restricting the job by race. The tribunal found that the age limit came from the Parks Canada agreement.

Nature Canada executive director Emily McMillan testified that the decision rested partly on her own observation over 30 years that audiences at environmental conferences are often entirely white, and partly on a study Nature Canada sponsored.

The program hired 351 young people, according to Nature Canada’s final report. Of those, 81 were Indigenous and 214 were black or people of colour, which leaves 56 who were neither.

McMillan testified that Nature Canada sometimes waived the eligibility criteria when employers told it they weren’t getting applications from youth facing barriers. Nature Canada removed the race requirement from the program in June 2023. McMillan testified that the change was a response to Salagan’s complaint, made to avoid similar lawsuits.

Salagan filed her complaint with Quebec’s human rights commission in October 2021, alleging discrimination based on age, race, colour and ethnic origin. The commission sided with her.

It found the ad violated the Charter and proposed that QuébecOiseaux pay her $4,000. It then declined to take the case to the tribunal itself, saying it did not raise public interest concerns, and authorized Salagan to sue on her own. She represented herself and sought $7,500.

Most of the decision deals with whether Salagan really wanted the job.

To answer that, the tribunal examined her university transcript, internship agreement, invoices, T4 slip and student financial aid application. It found that in fall 2021 she was a full-time law student at UQAM with a one-day-a-week internship, and that she was president of an animal rights committee. She was also teaching green-wall construction at a Laval horticulture centre at $80 an hour, which the tribunal noted is more than four and a half times what QuébecOiseaux was offering.

It concluded that “all of these elements make it implausible that she really wanted to apply.”

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How the DMV Enabled Voter Fraud in California

California’s long-term shift from a competitive or Republican-leaning state to a Democratic stronghold has been driven primarily by demographic change through immigration.

In 2018, more than one million illegal immigrants received driver’s licenses from the California DMV, which automatically registered them to vote under the new “Motor Voter” program.

Alex Padilla was California Secretary of State.

Back in 2015, Padilla told the Los Angeles Times, “At the latest, for the 2018 election cycle, I expect millions of new voters on the rolls in the state of California,” with “new voters” code for ineligible voters. Remember what happened in 2018?

AB 60 by former Democrat Assemblyman Luis Alejo, was just one of the many attempts over the past decade to authorize illegal immigrants with driver’s licenses. Alejo said AB 60 would reduce fatal crashes and improve public safety. AB 60 followed another law from 2012, AB 2189, which granted California driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants who came to California as children.

AB 60 was similar to bills authored by former Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, a Los Angeles Democrat, to give illegal immigrants the legal right to drive in California. Cedillo tried unsuccessfully seven or eight times to get his bill passed, but not without a fight. Cedillo’s bill was passed by the Legislature three times, but vetoed twice by then-Gov. Gray Davis.

Davis finally signed one of Cedillo’s bills in 2003, and it became an issue during his historic recall election. Davis was hammered on the issue by candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was elected to replace Davis. The Legislature then signed a repeal of the bill, and Schwarzenegger signed it into law.

Republican lawmakers said the 50 individual states should not be writing piecemeal immigration laws, as it is something Congress needs to handle at the federal level.

Not one lawmaker could answer how does a state government provide a document to drive legally, if the person came here illegally?

But even before then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 60 in 2013 to require California DMV offices to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, the fix was in.

Longtime Democratic political consultant and lobbyist with deep United Farm Workers ties (he worked with Cesar Chavez), Richie Ross openly boasted of targeting the Latino community’s fear of anti-illegal immigration measures, to drive the community even further into the arms of the Democratic Party, I explained in my book co-authored with attorney James Lacy, “California’s War Against Donald Trump; Who Wins? Who Loses?”

Ross, and now-State Senator Maria Elena Durazo, who once led the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, a group of self-proclaimed socialist and Communist California labor officials, and Democrat Party operatives created a program in the 1990s to target Latinos and immigrants, illegal and legal, to permanently drive California politics far to the left. They tripled registered Latino voters, increased the Democrat share of that vote substantially, and roughly doubled Latinos’ share of total votes cast in California.

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Why will Ottawa pay up to $801,521 for three chargers at an Alberta casino?

Natural Resources Canada has agreed to pay up to $801,521 for three electric vehicle chargers at Bear Hills Casino, the Louis Bull Tribe’s casino on the Queen Elizabeth II Highway at Maskwacis, south of Edmonton. On the record’s own numbers that is $267,174 a charger.

The agreement, running from July 24, 2026 to December 31, 2027, appears in the federal grants and contributions dataset under the Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Program (ZEVIP). Its description says the money supports “the installation of 3 electric vehicle chargers in Alberta.” The record gives no charger size and no breakdown of costs.

The program’s published guide caps the federal share. For the largest fast chargers, 200 kilowatts and up, the maximum is $100,000 per charger, or $150,000 for Indigenous businesses and communities, which may receive 75 per cent of project costs instead of 50. Three chargers at the top Indigenous rate would be $450,000. The record does not say what the other $351,521 covers.

It is one of ten ZEVIP agreements with July 2026 start dates, worth $12,178,881 together. The two largest, $5,000,000 to Hydro-Québec for 80 remote-site chargers and $2,000,000 to Propulsion Québec for truck charging sites, are utility and corridor projects. The rest are smaller. Greater Vancouver Zoo Ltd, a privately run zoo in Aldergrove, B.C., gets $250,000 for 22 chargers. Dixie Motors LP gets $99,999 for two chargers at 401 Dixie Hyundai in Mississauga. A numbered company, 1792318 Ontario Inc. of Milton, gets $725,754 for three chargers. PowerON of Toronto gets $1,000,000 for one heavy-duty charger. In November 2025 the department announced more than $9 million for 1,230 chargers, about $7,300 each, most of them Level 2.

No federal news release naming the casino, zoo or dealership agreements was found. Prime Minister Mark Carney paused the federal EV Availability Standard in September 2025 and ended it in February 2026, replacing it with emissions standards and a $2.3 billion rebate program. Asked in February whether ZEVIP would continue past March 2027, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson said, “We’ll spend the money and in 2027 we’ll see where we are.”

The record names no official who approved the agreement. Hodgson, the minister responsible, was appointed on May 13, 2025, is the MP for Markham-Thornhill and was chief executive of Goldman Sachs Canada until 2010.

The mandate is gone. The casino chargers are still on the taxpayer’s tab.

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Trump DOJ Nails Los Angeles Medical Fraud Ring Accused of Stealing Nearly $2 Billion — Sham Rehab Lured Homeless and Addicts, Unnecessary Surgeries Injured Patients, Phony Hospice Billed for Non-Dying Seniors

Federal agents and prosecutors under the Trump administration struck another massive blow against California’s runaway healthcare fraud industry Thursday, charging 15 defendants, including six medical professionals, in schemes that collectively submitted over $1.8 billion in fraudulent claims to Medicare, private insurers, and other programs.

The Justice Department’s announcement, led by First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli and Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald, targeted what prosecutors described as the largest substance abuse treatment fraud scheme the department has ever prosecuted, along with unnecessary invasive artery procedures that injured patients and multiple hospice fraud operations where beneficiaries were not terminally ill, New York Post reported.

Eight defendants were arrested, with others charged and expected in court.

The cases include a father-son operation and Texas recruiters accused of trafficking vulnerable people, including the homeless and those in recovery programs, to Southern California for sham treatment, according to the DOJ.

Nathan Young, 39, and his father David Young, 71, both of Los Angeles, along with Honey Phipps, 42, and Cody Phipps, 36, of Greenville, Texas, face charges in a years-long scheme that billed private insurers more than $1.6 billion.

Prosecutors allege they controlled dozens of purported treatment facilities and used “body brokers” to lure addicts and unhoused individuals with free flights, apartments, cash, drugs, and other inducements.

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Taxpayers Federation heads to Supreme Court to fight limits on taxman’s power to demand your emails and texts

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is intervening in a Supreme Court of Canada case that it says will decide how far government agencies, including the Canada Revenue Agency, can go in demanding Canadians’ private records.

“The government already takes enough of your money. It shouldn’t get a blank cheque to go snooping through your private emails, text messages and personal information too,” CTF general counsel Devin Drover told Rebel News.

The case is Ontario Securities Commission v. Binance Holdings Limited. In 2023, the OSC ordered the cryptocurrency exchange to turn over every communication about Ontario or Canada sent by any of its directors, officers, employees, contractors or consultants since January 1, 2021, with no limit on subject matter.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario struck down the demand in November 2025, calling it “staggering in its breadth.” The court ruled the order violated section 8 of the Charter, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, because the regulator had no reasonable foundation to believe the documents were relevant to its investigation.

The OSC is now asking the Supreme Court to replace that test with a looser one, under which an agency could demand any records “rationally connected” to its inquiry. According to the CTF, the OSC’s own filings say the ruling will affect the CRA’s power to demand records under the Income Tax Act.

The CTF argues that in a tax audit, almost any record a person holds can be tied to their income, so a lower standard would hand auditors near-unlimited reach.

“Just because some government bureaucrat wants to dig through your private life doesn’t mean they should have the power to do it,” Drover said.

He pointed out that Binance, a multinational company, spent more than two years before three different bodies before any court ruled on its Charter argument.

“Most Canadians don’t have an army of lawyers or deep pockets to fight back when government agencies overstep their authority. That’s why we’re taking this fight to the Supreme Court,” Drover said. “The government needs to be reminded that Canadians have constitutional rights, and those rights don’t disappear just because the taxman comes knocking.”

The case lands as Ottawa moves to toughen the CRA’s hand. According to the CTF, the Carney government’s budget bill, C-31, now before a House of Commons committee, would let the CRA fine taxpayers $50 a day, to a maximum of $25,000, for failing to fully answer an information request.

“If the Supreme Court lowers the bar in this case, it lowers it for the taxman too,” Drover said in a statement. “A tax auditor could demand years of a small business owner’s emails and texts on a hunch, and Ottawa wants to fine people $50 a day until they comply.”

The Supreme Court has not yet set a hearing date.

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