DEA Agent Lili Infante Traced Dark-Web Drug Empires—and Her Own Grandmother's Secret
In 2014, Lili Infante became the sole female member of her DEA class in Quantico and was assigned to Miami. Following the revelation of her husband’s infidelity, she initiated divorce proceedings and redirected her focus to cryptocurrency investigations. Infante purchased cocaine from HonestCocaine on Blue Sky for $200, which led to the arrest of Chrissano Leslie in 2016. She formed a Counternarcotics Cyber Task Force and initiated Operation Tornado against Dream Market, linking vendor UStoUS to Joshua Kelly's smoke shop, which was raided on May 9, 2017. On August 31, 2017, Gal Vallerius was apprehended with half a million in bitcoin. Infante later pursued Hydra after discovering her grandmother's marijuana sale to settle a gang debt, infiltrating it by posing as a chemist.
Key facts
- Lili Infante was the only woman in her 2014 DEA academy class at Quantico, Virginia
- She bought cocaine from vendor HonestCocaine on Blue Sky with $200 in DEA-authorized funds
- Owlcity's USPS tracking logs led to Chrissano Leslie of Miramar, arrested in 2016
- Operation Tornado targeted Dream Market vendors UStoUS and OxyMonster
- Joshua Kelly's Heady Warez shop in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, was raided May 9, 2017
- Gal Vallerius was detained at Atlanta International Airport on August 31, 2017, en route to the World Beard and Mustache Championships in Austin
- Vallerius' bitcoin wallet held half a million dollars
- Her grandmother Nina, 72, sold marijuana on Hydra to pay cousin Dennis' gang debt
Entities
Artists
- Lili Infante
- Luis Infante
- Lilita Shabazian
- Katya
- Nina
- Lia
- Jose Irizarry
- Boris Nayfeld
- Nikolai Dozortsev
- Arthur Dozortsev
- Diego Marin
- Igor
- Ross Ulbricht
- Chrissano Leslie
- Tigran Gambaryan
- Carl Force
- Joshua Kelly
- Gal Vallerius
- Yasmin Vallerius
- Dmitry Pavlov
- Dennis
Institutions
- DEA
- Columbia University
- Citi
- Harvard Extension School
- Windsor School
- Loomis Chaffee
- NYPD
- IRS Criminal Investigations Division
- FBI
- Homeland Security
- Transportation Security Administration
- Customs and Border Protection
- US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida
- Hetzner
- Hydra
- Dream Market
- Silk Road
- Blue Sky
- Heady Warez
- Yuca 105
- Miami Herald
- Daily Mail
- Vice
- The Guardian
- Bloomberg
- World Beard and Mustache Championships
- International Spy Museum
- Sinaloa Cartel
- Bratva
Locations
- Miami
- United States
- Moscow
- Russia
- Brighton Beach
- Brooklyn
- New York
- Quantico
- Virginia
- El Salvador
- San Salvador
- Miramar
- Florida
- Cape Girardeau
- Missouri
- Ozarks
- Atlanta
- Austin
- Texas
- Germany
- Cherepovets
- San Francisco
- Cambridge
- Massachusetts
- Yonkers
- Dubai
- Colombia
- Cartagena
- Madrid
- Amsterdam
- France
- Brittany
- Biscayne Bay
- South Beach
- Collins Avenue
- Chelsea
- Queens
- Connecticut