In 2008, New York City Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan began leading a team of undercover investigators targeting the drug dealers who used Craigslist to advertise their wares. She sounded confident.
"It's like shooting fish in a barrel," she told the Daily News. That year, a Citigroup vice president, Mark Rayner, was caught moving ecstasy and cocaine from his Midtown offices using Craigslist. "We see lots of professionals, people with good jobs, doing it," Brennan said.
Three years later, drug dealing on the classified-ads website is still blatant and ubiquitous.
Sellers thinly camouflage their activity by posting ads for "420 T-shirts" or "tickets to the 420 show," using the numerical calling card for marijuana, or referring to "Tina," "T," and "parTy" for crystal meth. "Snow" or "skiing" is a cocaine reference. "Relief" calls up a healthy section of pills: Xanax, Ambien, Ativan, Klonopin, morphine.
Ironically, no search term is more productive at bringing up drug ads than "law enforcement," standard words for a buyer or seller who insists he's not with the NYPD.
Only a man named "Kai," however, appears to sell heroin openly on New York's Craigslist pages. And he's not very subtle at all.
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