The fateful package arrived in Chicago in mid-March, just days after its 20-year-old recipient sent an encrypted email and $70 in Bitcoin to a man he knew on Reddit as “ScorpionDNP.” The package was sent from a Southwest Portland zip code.
Inside was a small white pill bottle with a black scorpion logo.
The supplier included a figurative wink-and-a-nudge label, saying the pills were to be placed into a water bottle and shaken before spraying the solution on indoor plants to protect them from “pests and microbes.”
The pill-based “pesticide” was a substance known as “DNP”—or “2,4-Dinitrophenol” to you chemists—and was first used for the production of ammunition in France in World War I. It’s now used legally as a pesticide, and in dyes and wood preservatives.
But ScorpionDNP wasn’t giving any genuine horticultural advice, and the young man from Chicago didn’t pay $70 in cryptocurrency for the sake of any plant—he swallowed the pills instead.
The Chicago man ingested the DNP to drop weight, just like all the others who populate the DNP-focused Reddit forums and Discord channels in search of a magic pill to help them obtain a lean physique, regardless of the health and legal risks.
These people, bodybuilders particularly, are willing to put up with the “sides”—dangerously elevated body temperatures, accelerated heart rate, extreme sweating, yellowing skin, dehydration, debilitating fatigue, likely nerve damage, and potential death—in order to burn fat and, in their minds, appear more attractive. However, the Food and Drug Administration has banned DNP for human consumption since the 1930s, due to numerous deaths.
Until recently, ScorpionDNP was the most trusted name in the online black market DNP game. Few knew his real identity, where he lived, or how he got his stuff, but he’s the guy to whom physique freaks would turn for the precious pills and advice on how to consume them. To many in the online DNP-consuming community, “Scorp” was a go-to scientist, makeshift physician, and their most trusted supplier. They used his online dosage calculator, read his guides, and asked him questions. He was the king of DNP.