Alexandre Cazes may have been the next Ross Ulbricht spending life in prison

On July 4 the Alphabay darknet market (only accessible through TOR) went down and with it a bunch of bitcoin transactions for drugs, counterfeit items, and weapons. It happened at the same time that a raid by the FBI and RCMP went down in Quebec, where some servers were reportedly seized. Turns out the events were related, and shortly after, authorities arrested a 26-year old Canadian in Thailand named Alexandre Cazes. He was about to be extradited to the US, but he instead reportedly hung himself in prison. It's pretty likely he was the owner of the site. He profited pretty well off something for sure, driving around his 4 Lamborghinis. I'm not gonna say this guy was always a shining example of amazing morals, but I think it's pretty shitty to see such amazing talent go to waste like this. The technical skill required to securely build and maintain a site like Alphabay is pretty incredible. Obviously he had help but still. Silk road founder Ross Ulbricht meanwhile has just been transferred to a prison in Colorado where he'll be doing his life sentence for his operating of that market. Life without the possibility of parole. He would have been better off committing armed robbery or molesting toddlers. To be honest I don't blame Alexandre for taking his life, especially once he knew he'd probably follow the same fate as Ross. Appeal after appeal where you face judges who have no idea what the fuck they're dealing with tech wise, piled on with crooked cops who fuck with your evidence and steal millions of dollars from the seized assets but get off with a few years in prison. The States' fucking war on drugs is what makes these marketplaces so popular in the first place, and it's that same bullshit war that leads to wasting brilliant people's lives like this. Kudos to the FBI, RCMP and all the other fucking acronyms who probably pulled some questionable shit to locate and seize one more marketplace for people to do transactions that would otherwise be done on the street with sketchy dealers. One down, a fuckton more to go. I can't defend everything Ross did but at least part of his actions make him a hero in my book. Rest in peace Alexandre. Sucks that your talents couldn't have been put to better use. For now I'm sure the US government is just gonna keep going with its programs to make more backdoors to spy on its citizens and catch the next market owner. Ugh.