To better understand the drug trade on the darknet, BBC journalists Joe Tyde and Alison Benjamin made two purchases - ecstasy and cocaine.
They also learned how easy it is for drug dealers to continue their business, even when the police shut down the online store where they ran their business.
At first glance, Torez looked like a normal shopping site - thousands of products were listed, there were customer reviews with star ratings for each seller, information on estimated delivery times and payment methods.
The only difference was the products themselves.
Peruvian "fish scale" cocaine, "champagne" MDMA, "Blue Punisher" ecstasy pills...
These are not items you can find on Amazon or eBay.
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Until a few weeks ago, Torez was a dark web store where customers could find sellers of everything from drugs and hacking tools to counterfeit cash and Tasers.
It was one of the most popular dark web markets in the world, and the BBC was one of its last customers.
As part of Radio 4's research into drug trafficking on the dark web, we used Torez to buy ecstasy pills from a UK dealer.
It was an enlightening experience.
There is a myth that buying drugs on the dark web is as easy as ordering a pizza, but buying drugs with cryptocurrency and encrypted communication with the seller took hours.
The "super strong" pills arrived as promised, within a couple of days in the mail.
Three tiny ecstasy pills were contained in an oversized box - an example of "invisible packaging" that disguises its contents.
A package of cocaine from a dealer on another site arrived with a fake invoice from a company selling medicinal herbs.
The BBC tested the drug (it was less potent than advertised) and then it was destroyed in the lab.
The United Nations estimates that darknet shops represent only a fraction of total global drug sales - perhaps less than one percent - though that fraction is growing.
But the annual survey of thousands of drug users, the World Drug Report (produced by the UN), paints a different picture.
In 2021, almost one in four respondents from North America reported buying drugs from the dark web, and one in six in Europe and Oceania.
In Russia, that number is 86 percent, in Finland and Sweden more than 40 percent, and more than 30 percent in England, Scotland and Poland.
The number of darknet drug markets in the English-speaking world fell last year, but Britain's National Crime Agency (NCA) says revenue has risen by 14 percent.
The world of drugs on the dark web is chaotic and constantly changing.
Sites go down from time to time, those who run them disappear with the customer's or seller's money - which is known as "exit fraud".
They can also be hacked or shut down by the police and removed from the internet entirely.
But there is a new trend for stores to close the usual way, known as "sunset" or "voluntary retirement."
A big player, White House Market, did it last fall, and another, Kanazon, followed in its footsteps.
And then came Torrez, who posted a letter on the main page last month, announcing it was closing and saying it had "been a great pleasure working with most of the vendors and users."
The site administrator thanked the customers and promised them that the market will remain online "for at least another two to three weeks until all orders are delivered".
"Thank you for your dignified departure - we greatly appreciate it," wrote one customer.
Another added: "Thank you for doing this so professionally and honestly."
"It seems to be happening more and more at the moment. The marketers walk away with dignity and say, 'We've made enough money and before we get caught, we're just going to retire and ride off into the sunset,'" says Professor David Decary-Hetu, a criminologist at the University of Montreal.
He says administrators who run large markets like Torez can earn more than $100.000 a day in commissions.
For police officers, who would prefer criminals to receive the punishment they deserve, this type of departure causes mixed feelings.
"I always welcome anyone who may realize they are in a criminalized profession and decide not to dig deeper," says Alex Hudson, the NCA's head of darknet intelligence.
"If there's one thing I regret, it's that they would have to be held accountable for it and that they have to be aware that they're still liable to be held accountable."
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But while riding off into the sunset is all the rage right now, BBC data analysis shows that markets are still more likely to close through exit fraud.
Police arrests are even rarer, although there have been a few notable successes.
American Ross Ulbricht is serving two life sentences with 40 years in prison without the possibility of parole for running the first major dark web market, Silk Road, which existed from 2011 to 2013.
In October, 150 suspects were arrested in what the NCA called the "biggest operation of its kind", which stemmed from the January 2021 takedown of a website called the Dark Market.
Police services from a large number of countries participated, and arrests were made in the USA, Germany, Great Britain and elsewhere.
But even when an illegal market is closed, it can have very little effect on the sellers, who can only move to a new one.
Figures analyzed by the BBC show that at least 450 dealers active today - and this is a conservative estimate - have survived previous police arrests.
Among them is a dealer named Next Generation, which has appeared in 21 different markets in six years.
It is estimated that during this period this criminal, or group of criminals, made at least 140.000 sales, selling products such as cannabis, cocaine and ketamine.
In an encrypted email, Next Generation said police were facing an "impossible task".
"In general, catching criminals depends on simple user error. Law enforcement agencies don't wake up one day, 'crack the code' and arrest people."
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The Pygmalion Syndicate, a self-proclaimed "hippy collective" of dealers from the UK and Germany, also told the BBC they were not worried about being caught because they were careful what they were doing - "they act like secret agents in enemy territory".
"Police closures have practically not even touched our territory and I believe that most other sellers are not too worried about them either," they said.
"There are no reasons why anyone's life should be disrupted by these events."
The NCA's Alex Hudson admits the police have often been a step behind criminals, but claims new technology will change that.
"Unlike the situation we had just a few years ago, we can extract information from the data we get and then identify criminals much faster," he told the BBC.
"I think we're actually witnessing a turning of the tide."
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