The third convicted cybercriminal — the biggest Dutch user and the number 10 user worldwide — received a four-year sentence. The chart above shows that ASAP and Mega Darknet markets led the large retail and wholesale segments respectively. Looking closer at ASAP Market inflows, it won some share of revenue across all drug purchase types, receiving 37.1% of social supply, 35.7% of large retail, 16.5% of small retail, and 13.5% of wholesale purchases. On a smaller scale, Mega Darknet Market placed a few ads with QR codes in public places like Moscow subway trains. While tactics like these may have helped boost revenue for both markets, again, they have yet to match Hydra’s sizable financial success.
Police Operation ‘SpecTor’ Arrests 288 Dark Web Drug Vendors And Buyers
Darknet marketplaces allow drug vendors to sell and ship their goods in supposed security. In the past, investigators have managed to take down the operators of such sites, but catching vendors has proven to be more tricky. Earlier this year, police in Germany, Ukraine and the Netherlands, along with Europol and the FBI, announced a joint effort that led to raids on the homes of members of a the DoppelPaymer ransomware gang and the seizure of computer equipment belonging to its members. The FBI also worked with law enforcement agencies across Europe to take down Hive ransomware infrastructure in January.
Co-operator Of DeepDotWeb Sentenced To More Than 8 Years For Money Laundering
While announced as a package today, the arrests in the US have trickled through over the last several months. In a press conference Tuesday morning, DEA acting administrator Timothy Shea specifically called out Arden McCann, allegedly known as RCQueen, DRXanax, and other aliases across numerous dark web markets. Arrested earlier this year, McCann allegedly shipped over 10 2kilograms of fentanyl and over 300,000 counterfeit Xanax pills every month. In the US, Operation Disruptor plays out across dozens of court documents and around 120 arrests. In Ohio, members of a group known as PillCosby were charged with mailing out over a million pills laced with fentanyl.
Eagle Pass Casino Shooting: 2 Killed, 5 Hurt; Suspect In Custody, Authorities Say
A new, Reddit-style forum site called Dread, hosted on a Tor hidden service, has already replaced the seized DeepDotWeb as a community hub, where users discuss which site to use when one is taken down by police or turns out to be run by scammers. HSI is a worldwide law enforcement leader in Darknet and other cyber-related criminal investigations. The DHS Cyber Crimes Center (C3) combats cybercrime, online child sexual exploitation, and criminal exploitation of the internet with state-of-the-art forensic technology. The Center investigates large-scale cybercrime threats and provides expertise on cybercrime investigations to the field.
- “I’m distrustful of DeSnake, and I think across the communities there’s a general distrust.”
- Of those arrested 119 were based in the US, two in Canada, 42 in Germany, eight in the Netherlands, four in the UK, three in Austria and one in Sweden.
- Those arrested had sold drugs on a variety of darknet marketplaces, among them AlphaBay, Empire and DeepSea.
- In an extended chat interview, DeSnake tells WIRED how he walked away unscathed from the takedown of AlphaBay, why he has resurfaced now, and what his plans are for the resurrected, once-dominant online black market.
- The Darknet is a part of the internet that cannot be indexed by search engines and must be accessed through the use of special browsers.
Darknet Market Services Show Fragmentation In 2023
Throughout 2024, DNM vendors also sent far more value to personal wallets and stored funds on-chain. Retail vendors appear to be holding a greater portion of their proceeds on-chain than wholesale vendors, while wholesale vendors (those who distribute drugs in large quantities) are making greater use of DeFi. Historically, DNMs have been known for the illicit drug trade, but in recent years have differentiated themselves with unique service offerings.
Pharmacies In Mexico Are Shut As Authorities Crack Down On Fentanyl-tainted Pills
Keep an eye on advancements in blockchain forensics, the evolving use of AI in detecting illicit transactions, and metrics related to darknet market activity, as these will indicate the ongoing effectiveness of global efforts to combat crypto-enabled crime. Crypto influencers and thought leaders have been quick to emphasize the distinction between legitimate cryptocurrency use and its exploitation by criminals. Many have used this opportunity to laud the increasing sophistication of blockchain analytics, which played a key role in tracking RAKS’ illicit funds. This narrative aims to counter the long-standing stereotype that cryptocurrencies are primarily tools for criminals, instead highlighting how the transparency of public ledgers can aid law enforcement.
The vendors openly advertised their drugs on Hydra, typically including photographs and a description of the controlled substance. Buyers rated the sellers and their products on a five-star rating system, and the vendors’ ratings and reviews were prominently displayed on the Hydra site. Law enforcement agencies seized over $31.6 million in cash and virtual currencies and approximately 234 kilograms of drugs worldwide, including amphetamines, cocaine, opioids and MDMA during the 10-month-long operation. The Justice Department said investigators also collected more than 200,000 pills of ecstasy, fentanyl, oxycodone, hydrocodone, and methamphetamine.
They are accused of using the Darkweb to sell and mail the mixture of opioids to various jurisdictions including Tennessee, at times falsely misrepresenting the dangerous narcotics as the more conventional drugs and selling them to customers. Roughly a year ago, the German police, in coordination with U.S. authorities, shut down the world’s largest darknet market dedicated to selling drugs, named ‘Hydra,’ also seizing €23 million worth of cryptocurrency. According to the investigation, Incognito Market was an online narcotics bazaar that existed on the dark web. Since that time, and through its closing in March 2024, Incognito Market sold more than $100 million in narcotics — including hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamines.
Operation SpecTor was a coordinated international effort spanning three continents to disrupt fentanyl and opioid trafficking on the darknet, or dark web. The operation was conducted across the United States, Europe, and South America, and was a result of the continued partnership between JCODE and foreign law enforcement against the illegal sale of drugs and other illicit goods and services on the darknet. Operation SpecTor builds on the successes of prior years’ operations and takedowns of marketplaces, which result in the seizure of darknet infrastructure providing investigators across the world with investigative leads and evidence. JCODE and Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) continue to compile intelligence packages to identify entities of interest. These leads allow U.S. and international law enforcement agencies to identify darknet drug vendors and buyers, resulting in a series of coordinated, but separate, law enforcement investigations, resulting in the statistics announced today. Building on the successes of prior years’ operations, Operation RapTOR furthered global efforts to dismantle darknet marketplaces, resulting in the seizure of darknet infrastructure from Nemesis, Tor2Door, Bohemia, and Kingdom Markets.
The collapse of the RAKS darknet exchange has elicited a multifaceted response from the broader crypto community, largely underscoring a collective desire to distance legitimate blockchain innovation from illicit activities. On platforms like Crypto Twitter and Reddit, initial sentiment leans towards a “good riddance” mentality, with many users expressing approval for law enforcement’s decisive action. This perspective views the dismantling of such a large-scale money laundering operation as a crucial step towards cleaning up the ecosystem and enhancing crypto’s overall reputation.
Dark Web Drug Busts Lead To 150 Arrests
The Wall Street Market seizure is not the first or even most devastating law enforcement takeover of a dark web storefront. In 2017, Dutch police took control of Hansa, a booming darknet market, and the FBI shut down AlphaBay, an even larger competitor. While displaced AlphaBay users flocked to Hansa for their fix, Dutch authorities spent weeks logging their activity, including many of their home addresses. Investors and enthusiasts should closely monitor ongoing regulatory developments, particularly the implementation of FATF’s “Travel Rule” and frameworks like MiCA in Europe. Key dates to remember include the RAKS bust itself on September 30, 2025, and other recent enforcement actions such as the TradeOgre dismantling (September 25, 2025) and significant pleas from exchanges like KuCoin (June 2, 2025) and OKX (February 24, 2025).
- Investigators received leads from local police departments investigating overdose deaths, including that of a 19-year-old man in Colorado who loved learning languages and building his own computers, according to FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate.
- Police are getting better at targeting operations on the dark web – a part of the internet that is accessible only through specialised tools.
- As part of the investigation, the Dutch National Police took the lead on cybercrime prevention, and Van Well shared his insight on the sophistication of the fraud shop’s operation.
- The Dutch national police’s Cyber Enabled Crime Team was involved in the operation, code-named SpecTor.
- The results of that investigation were published in a report called Technical analysis of the Genesis Market.
‘Perfect Storm’ Caused Botched Evacuations During Deadly Eaton Fire, Investigation Finds
This increase may be due in part to the closures of top DNMs, the shift to the exclusive acceptance of XMR by other active markets, and delistings of XMR by popular centralized exchanges. The below graph shows an increase in Abacus sales (in BTC) following the closure of ASAP Market in July 2023, and a further increase following some CEXs delisting XMR. As for online pharmacies, these have predominantly catered to wholesale and large retail customers in the last several years, and 2024 saw growth in wholesale purchases toward the end of last year. Although CEXs remain a stable destination in the DNM ecosystem, the pattern of sending funds to them shifted in 2024, as illustrated in the chart below. Last year, DNM vendors sent a significantly higher portion of their funds to DeFi than they did historically.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York also landed a key conviction, securing a guilty plea from Rui-Siang Lin. Lin was the operator of Incognito Market, a major darknet hub that, between 2020 and 2024, handled over $100 million in illicit drug sales. Word of successful prosecutions tied to Operation RapTor is already coming in from multiple U.S. federal districts. Down in California, two men were handed stiff prison sentences of 17 and 15 years for peddling fentanyl-laced pills to over 1,000 people through darknet sites.
Partnerships
As part of this operation, law enforcement agencies also confiscated 850 kilograms (1,874 lbs) of drugs, including cocaine, amphetamines, MDMA, LSD, ecstasy, and 117 firearms. “Europol has been compiling intelligence packages based on troves of evidence provided by German authorities, who successfully seized the marketplace’s criminal infrastructure in December 2021,” reads Europol’s public notice. However, Europol confirmed for the first time today that Monopoly Market had been seized by German authorities in 2021 and used to collect evidence on the vendors and customers who bought and sold drugs on the site.
In an economy where the demand—drug-addicted users—remains constant or growing, that’s only to be expected. As Monaco noted Tuesday, the dark web drug racket was already a billion-dollar industry before the pandemic drove it to new heights. It is a priority for CBC to create products that are accessible to all in Canada including people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive challenges. “Other marketplaces will take advantage of this and they might have an increase in traffic to their marketplace,” he said.
