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“It was not just buying houses for the fun of it,” he said.

Jakub Hanke, who met Cazes in Bangkok through an online forum for ex-pats, said the Canadian kept to himself.

“He never joined us for parties and kept his life more for himself. I can’t say a bad word about him because while a bit awkward, he was always nice and helpful,” Hanke said.

He said he was aware Cazes drove a Porsche and then later a Lamborghini, but he was astounded to read in the Thai press that he was worth as much as $15 million.

“His explanation was that he earned it through early investing and then trading Bitcoin,” he said.

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Edward J. McAndrew, a former federal cyber-crime prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said AlphaBay, which shut down following Cazes’ arrest, would have been a highly profitable enterprise.

Launched in 2014, it is part of the dark web, which uses encrypted technology to shield users’ identity. In the United States, prosecutors this year have charged at least two men for separate operations selling opioids over AlphaBay. The U.S. magazine Wired has estimated that the site was bringing in between US$600,000 and US$800,000 in revenue every day.

McAndrew said the dark web can perform a valuable service, for example providing anonymity to people opposing repressive regimes. But it has also been embraced by a criminal underworld.

“AlphaBay was using the anonymity and the obfuscation measures available on the dark web to set up a forum that could be used for the buying and selling of everything from narcotics to stolen personal information to weapons and on and on,” he said. “Basically it’s a bazaar for illicit goods and services.”

Now a partner at the law firm Ballard Spahr, McAndrew said Cazes would likely have faced serious charges of trafficking and conspiracy and a lengthy prison sentence if convicted.

“Based on the drug quantities that were being trafficked over the website, he could have faced at least 30 years, if not life imprisonment,” he said.

• Email: ghamilton@nationalpost.com | Twitter: grayhamilton