Defunct: TripWithScience
Matthew Taylor Barlow, better known by his darknet vendor names, “TripWithScience” and “PERFECTSHROOMS”, was a dark-net drug vendor who began vending on the Silk Road in 2011 and mainly sold a product called “Liquid Mushrooms” that was advertised as Psilocybin suspended in a clean ethanol/distilled water based solution that provided a shorter-lasting, nausea-free trip, and occasionally adderall pills during his earlier years vending. It was noticed by many that he was active on nearly all dark-net markets during his first few years vending, though he was mainly active on CGMC prior to his arrest on April 20, 2021. Under his alternative alias, “PERFECTSHROOMS”, he sold capsules containing what he claimed to be was ground up, magic mushroom powder.
He briefly made media attention in 2015, when he donated $6,000 to an earthquake relief group after a powerful earthquake struck Nepal and killed over 9000 people, and when he announced he was giving a $1,000 donation to the medical group Medecins Sans Frontieres, after a U.S airstrike killed 19 people in a hospital in Afghanistan.
A lot of users on dark-net forums such as Dread and The Hub said they noticed that the effects of his product were significantly different than those of regular Psilocybin mushrooms, claiming that it had an “electric” feel to it, and that it provided more visual effects, which gave way to speculation that his product actually contained 4-AcO-DMT, a synthetic DMT analogue that mainly converts into Psilocyn once ingested. Several laboratories that tested “Liquid Mushroom” vials sent to them, presumably from TripWithScience, confirmed that it was indeed 4-AcO-DMT and that Psilocybin was completely absent from the vials. According to the court case, 4-AcO-DMT is what TripWithScience was actually selling.
On October 22, 2020, HSI Columbus obtained information from a seized dark-net market that contained over 30 Bitcoin transactions belong to TripWithScience. After a subpoena was sent to Coinbase, they revealed that the address belonged to Matthew Taylor Barlow, and that he had sold over 300 Bitcoins valued at $717,461.27 and purchased only 1 Bitcoin valued at $188.94. The subpoena sent to Coinbase also revealed that he had used his Coinbase account via Shiftpayments to make purchases of materials that were used to pack and ship his products all over the world. After law enforcement retrieved this information through a subpoena, they decided to follow Barlow and managed to intercept many packages sent from him, including some sent under his other alias, “PERFECTSHROOMS”.
A search warrant was issued to Google to obtain the contents from his Gmail account, [email protected], in which investigators discovered many images showing bags of mushrooms with the animated scientist displayed in the TripWithScience icon and the script “u/TripWithScience” written underneath. After searching through his Google Drive data, investigators discovered a spreadsheet named “TCS Accounting”, which had tabs going back to 2014 with income and expense reports from various dark-net markets. According to the information in the spreadsheet, his income increased from $211,019.52 in 2014 to $2,814,606.25 in 2021, while his total value was $4,378,974.48 in 2020. 6 people, including Matthew Barlow, were charged with conspiring to possess with intent to distribute a psychedelic mushroom analogue.
