The Irish Mirror, an Irish newspaper has made claims that their undercover investigation revealed poisonous spiders and snakes are being purchased with bitcoin via the Dark Web and then shipped into Ireland where it is legal to breed them. The article goes on to report that lizards, geckos and even rattlesnakes are available for purchase.

A reporter travelled to meet 3 sellers, one which claimed to have sold out of vipers last week, another who refused to sell vipers to a first timer and the last who explained to them how easy it is to go online, order the reptiles and ship them into Ireland so that they can be bred locally and sold to willing buyers.

A search of the Interpol, Europol, Garda¹ and Google revealed nothing about bitcoin being used to purchase reptiles via the dark markets.

Source – http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/irish-sunday-mirror-investigation-how-4421030

1. Irish National Police. ↩