One vender, “Ladyskywalker,” operated on several darknet marketplaces, where the individual advertised and sold opioids such as fentanyl, oxycodone and hydrocodone. The site boasted some 500,000 users and facilitated around 320,000 transactions, reports the EU’s law enforcement agency, Europol, with clientele buying and selling everything from malware and stolen credit card information, to weapons and drugs. When German authorities arrested the site’s alleged operator in January this year, they also seized valuable evidence of transactions which led to this week’s arrest of key players. Law enforcement confiscated criminal servers and seized data that could help to identify users of the platform, the BKA said. They also obtained €94,000 ($102,000) worth of cryptocurrency assets, allegedly earned through illegal activity.
Silk Road Bitcoins Worth $1bn Change Hands After Seven Years
Exit scams are common among large darknet marketplaces, which typically hold money in escrow while a vendor delivers illicit goods. Until recently, Wall Street Market was a bustling bazaar for illegal goods, including dangerous drugs like fentanyl and physical items like fake documents. It had more than a million user accounts, some 5,400 vendors and tens of thousands of items available for purchase. It has grown as other darknet marketplaces have been cornered and shut down, driving users and sellers to a dwindling pool of smaller platforms.
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Police in Germany have shut down a ‘CyberBunker’ allegedly used as a dark web marketplace, spurring on an investigation into the DarkMarket. German authorities said Hydra Market’s “Bitcoin Bank Mixer” service, which obfuscates cryptocurrency transactions, was also disrupted in the raid. The cryptocurrency laundering angle will be of particular interest to threat analysts and enterprise network defenders. “The preliminary investigation pending at the ZIT in this regard is directed against the previously unknown operators and administrators of the platform mentioned,” read a translation of the German announcement. In addition to taking down the servers hosting the forum, German police with the Central Office for Combating Cybercrime (ZIT) took control of the keys for wallets holding around $25 million worth of bitcoin.
German Police Seize ‘Nemesis Market’ In Major International Darknet Raid
In the past six months, many high-profile darknet markets have shut down but Hydra was seemingly impervious to police attempts to stop it. Past operations against cybercrime markets suggest that even though Nemesis’s infrastructure was shut down, the criminals might retain the ability to restart their operations somewhere else. “The global threat of cybercrime and ransomware that originates in Russia, and the ability of criminal leaders to operate there with impunity, is deeply concerning to the United States,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in the statement. “Our actions send a message today to criminals that you cannot hide on the darknet or their forums, and you cannot hide in Russia or anywhere else in the world.”
The news comes during a turbulent time for darknet markets with the most prominent sites closing down in recent months, either voluntarily or as a result of police activity. Nemesis sold all kinds of illegal goods — drugs, compromised data and cybercrime services such as ransomware and tools to conduct phishing or DDoS attacks. The wares it offered included drugs, fraudulently obtained data and goods, and cybercrime services including ransomware, phishing and distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attacks. In addition to the law enforcement actions taking down Hydra’s illegal marketplace, the U.S. sanctioned the company, along with a virtual currency exchange based in Estonia, the U.S. Hydra Market was a Russian-language marketplace that had operated via the Tor network since at least 2015 and was known for extensive drug trafficking, according to German authorities.
Europol Reveals German Law Enforcement Was Behind ‘Monopoly Market’ Takedown
In 2021, Hydra accounted for an estimated 80% of all darknet market-related cryptocurrency transactions, and since 2015, the marketplace has received approximately $5.2 billion in cryptocurrency. Darknet markets are oftentimes not limited by physical borders between countries, though some make the ecosystem less sustainable with their laws. These sites will come and go, but the void will always be filled by up-and-coming sites because the demand for these substances will never go away. In this section, we will talk about the top five darknet markets that hold operations in Germany across major cities like Hamburg, Berlin, etc. In Europe, Germany is among the top three biggest markets for drugs, next to the UK and the Netherlands, and they have a lot of darknet markets operating in the country. This is the not the first time German authorities have successfully busted the operator of an illegal online platform or service.
BKA’s press release concludes that investigations to identify the people who operated the illegal market are underway, now also aided by analysis of the seized server infrastructure. German police have shut down one of the world’s largest illegal online markets in the so-called dark web and arrested the three men allegedly running it, prosecutors said on Friday. “The vendors arrested as a result of the police action against Monopoly Market were also active on other illicit marketplaces, further impeding the trade of drugs and illicit goods on the dark web,” Europol said.
The DOJ also charged one of Hydra Market’s alleged operators with conspiracy to distribute narcotics and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Identifying the operators of darknet platforms that have gone defunct for several years isn’t uncommon, as cybercrime investigators work on these cases for extended periods. In 2018, two new versions of the platform appeared on the dark web, using the motto “No control, everything allowed,” implying the new operators no longer cared about masking illegal activities on the site. The platform had already gone offline in March 2022, with 16,000 registered users, 28,000 posts, and 72 high-volume sellers of prohibited goods, including weapons and drugs. BKA has not mentioned if the server administrators or any of the platform’s core operators were identified or arrested during the action. And as law enforcement gained access to the vendors’ extensive buyer lists during the operation, thousands of customers around the world are also at risk of prosecution.
German authorities took down the world’s largest illegal marketplace on the darknet with the help of U.S. law enforcement agencies, they said. Archetyp Market operated as a drug marketplace for over five years, amassing more than 600,000 users worldwide with a total transaction volume of at least €250 million. With over 17,000 listings, it is one of the few darknet markets that allowed the sale of fentanyl and other highly potent synthetic opioids, contributing to the growing threat posed by these substances in Europe and beyond. At the time of its closure, the platform boasted 16,000 registered users, 72 high-volume sellers of illegal goods such as drugs and weapons, and 28,000 posts.
US Widens Sanctions On Russian Crypto Exchange Garantex, Its Successor And Affiliate Firms
PGP support and two-factor authentication are both available on the market as an additional layer of security. Finnish customs, partnered with French police, made a “significant” bitcoin seizure from the Silkkitie takedown. Catherine De Bolle, Europol’s executive director, said the results this week demonstrate “illegal activity on the dark web is not as anonymous as criminals may think.” Two covert websites used to sell drugs, stolen data and malware have been shut down following arrests and raids conducted as part of a global police operation. Hydra Market, whose users were primarily in Russian-speaking countries, last year accounted for what is estimated to have been 80% of all darknet market-related cryptocurrency transactions, according to the Justice Department.
The Darknet Drug Dealers Who Keep Coming Back
Three German men alleged to be administrators of the site were arrested, while a fourth man – a Brazilian who, prosecutors said, acted as an online mediator for the website – was arrested in Brazil. The encrypted platform had more than 1m customer accounts, over 5,000 registered sellers and more than 60,000 sales offers, according to Frankfurt prosecutors and affidavits filed by US prosecutors in a federal court in Los Angeles. The “Wall Street Market” (WSM) site enabled trade in cocaine, heroin, cannabis and amphetamines as well as stolen data, fake documents and malicious software. Users could search for vendors selling their desired type of identification document – for example, U.S. passports or drivers’ licenses – and filter or sort by the item’s price.
- The Treasury Department said marketplaces that reside on the dark net almost exclusively accept virtual currency as payment.
- The information that was stored on those servers will lead them to the moderators, sellers, and customers of the marketplace.
- Many of the closures have come from criminals choosing to gradually bring their operations to a close, and disappear with their riches.
- “The administrators of Hydra reportedly claim that the market is undergoing ‘technical works’ and have not acknowledged the takedown,” the company said.
- However, BKA’s official announcement today about the seizure confirmed that it was a law enforcement operation.
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Europol said the operation seized more than €50.8 million ($53.4 million) in cash and virtual currencies, as well as 850kg of drugs — including over 258 kg of amphetamines, 43kg of cocaine, 43kg of MDMA and over 10 kg of LSD and ecstasy pills — alongside 117 firearms. Users across multiple forums had previously expressed concerns about being victims of an exit scam, where marketplace administrators simply disappear with customers’ funds. According to the announcement made by Europol, the primary products that vendors sold on the marketplace were illegal substances, counterfeit money and credit card details, malware, and anonymous SIM cards. According to Europol, more than 1.1 million customer accounts and more than 5,400 vendors were tied to Wall Street Market, which accepted payments in cryptocurrency.
Police in Germany have taken down a major dark web market for drugs and criminal activity. Treasury’s moves against the Garantex exchange stem directly from U.S. efforts to sanction the Russian financial system because of the Ukraine invasion. The cryptocurrency business was founded in Estonia in 2019 but lost its license to operate there and “continues to provide services to customers through unscrupulous means,” Treasury said. “Our actions send a message today to criminals that you cannot hide on the dark net or their forums, and you cannot hide in Russia or anywhere else in the world,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin said in a news release. Through thorough analysis, the United States Postal Inspection Service was able to “de-mix” the flow of transactions, to eventually ascertain that the money from Wallets 1 and 2 ultimately paid FROST’s account at the Product Services Company. The recent arrest was related to the person operating the third version of the platform.
Before taking down CrimeMarket, German authorities worked alongside international agencies to bust the prolific LockBit ransomware gang. After taking down LockBit’s website, the criminals regrouped to launch a series of devastating attacks on critical infrastructure in various countries around the world, including the US, Canada, and Britain. For as long as the law curtails a substance that the people really want, the darknet markets will be there to facilitate the delivery of these things.
