The stepmother of the late Alexandre Cazes told Ars that she and her husband have a hard time believing what American and European authorities have said about their son as a criminal suspect. The Department of Justice said Thursday that Cazes was behind the recently shuttered AlphaBay , the world’s largest underground drug website,

The DOJ also said that Cazes was arrested on July 5 in Thailand at his home outside Bangkok and apparently committed suicide while in a Thai jail on July 12.

In a brief French-language interview conducted over Facebook Messenger on Friday afternoon, Kathy Gauthier, of Trois-Rivières, Québec, said that Cazes was always a "good boy" who had no previous run-ins with the law.

"We always thought his wealth was because of his investments in cryptocurrency and not with a dark market," she said. "And we don’t understand how he could be how the FBI describes him; it’s totally not the personality of Alexandre Cazes!"

She continued: "And if what the FBI says is true in totality, well, it’s not the Alexandre Cazes that we know… but we will love him just the same and we forgive him."

Gauthier also said that Cazes had come back to Canada around Christmastime last year, which is where she met her son’s Thai wife. According to Gauthier, her late stepson’s Thai wife is set to give birth "in around three weeks."

Before moving to Thailand, Cazes founded a company called EBX Technologies, which offered Web development and other services. The company’s website, which is now only available through the Internet Archive, was last available in March 2017. Ars called the 877 phone number listed on the site, which still plays a French-language voice message asking callers to dial an extension or hold the line for someone to respond. When we held the line, generic soft rock played for several seconds until we were referred to a voicemail box.

"a genius like him"

Earlier on Friday, Gauthier expressed similar doubts in a public French-language Facebook post, which we have translated and reprinted here, in full:

The FBI must absolutely have a culprit, and now that Alex has died, it’s difficult to get information, so why not put the [criminal] charges on Alex’s shoulders…I even heard on the radio that they brought up an e-mail address linked to the site which was Alex's personal address!!! Let's see! See if a genius like him would have done some shit like that! And by the way, EBX Technologie was created by Alex in 2009 and he really worked honestly and designed several programs and websites for several businesses, alphabay was created in 2014 following the closure of silk road, and at the risk of repeating myself He was already a millionaire before alphabay! So we really don't understand what his motives would have been... if he really did what the Americans blame him for in the past 3 years and not forever... in any case he was never judged and will never be able to defend himself from these accusations... easy to put everything on his shoulders now... anyway we will never know the truth but we still have serious doubts.. but it will never change the Love we have for him and no matter for us he will always be in our heart ❤️ rip alexandre.. we really love you, forever ❤️❤️❤️

On July 13, Gauthier also wrote: "he was a good little guy, peaceful, anti-drug guy, all his life he tried to convince his dad to quit smoking cigarettes!.. [the father, Martin Cazes] finally stopped in September before going to Thailand... In short, Alexandre was not a criminal."

That same day, Alexandre’s father, Martin Cazes, told a Quebecois radio station, Radio Mauricie, that he suspects that his son may have been killed and not taken his own life, as American authorities have said.

"He never had a criminal record," Cazes told the station in a French-language interview. "He never smoked a cigarette, never took drugs."

"Thai girls love supercars"

On Friday afternoon, The Globe and Mail , a Canadian newspaper, described how Cazes, under the name Rawmeo , frequently posted to Roosh V, a "pickup artist" discussion forum.

The site's founder acknowledged Rawmeo's passing in a post on Thursday.

In December 2014, in one of his early posts, Rawmeo started a still-ongoing thread entitled: "The most beta thing you did."

According to the paper, Rawmeo apparently submitted a several-thousand-long word post in 2016 about dating and "wife-hunting" in Thailand. He explained that unlike most foreigners who simply seek "promiscuous women in tourist areas," he had lived in the country since 2012. Moreover, he had attended a Thai language school, purchased property, and drove a Porsche Panamera because "Thai girls love supercars."

According to The Globe and Mail, Cazes "described his native Quebec as a place where too many are on welfare and where Muslim refugees get in easily and ‘start breeding like bedbugs,’ while he had trouble getting a visa for his Thai relatives."

"I left a broken society to live in a traditional one," he wrote in January 2017.

In another post, he wrote: "I am what we call a professional cheater. Despite having a live-in wife, I have a secondary residence that no one knows about—and that’s where I bring girls."

Rawmeo last logged on to the site on July 4, just one day before he was arrested. Roosh V records show that he posted 1,587 times, or an average of 1.55 posts per day.

Cazes also showed some small evidence of his tech prowess. In December 2016, he recommended the encrypted messaging app Signal, saying, "it feels good to know that nobody can snoop on my conversations. It's just about privacy."

In May 2017, he wrote about about how, as a "real privacy advocate," he preferred Arch Linux "because I can save all my documents on my persistent hard drive and do all of my daily tasks without any problem."

When Ars pointed Gauthier to The Globe and Mail story, she wrote: "You’ve just made me discover a part of his life!"

She didn't seem fazed by Cazes' writings and added: "Why relate conversations of kids who toss [such comments] back and forth! Who is more ‘pimped’ than another! They all do that in their school hallways. Or in bars! No, it doesn’t shock me."

She continued in English:

"With all the fake news today, I don't think that everything we see is the real thing, and how can we be sure about all this conversation!!? And a lot of people say all kind of things on forums! And some people likes to get reactions and i think this is what Alex did if he 'really' said that."