Police around the world have arrested 150 suspects in one of the largest-ever dark web sting operations.
The suspects arrested included several high-profile targets, involved in buying or selling illegal goods online, Europol said today.
Operation Dark HunTOR also recovered millions of pounds in cash and , as well as drugs and guns.
The bust stems from a German-led police sting earlier this year taking down the ‘world’s largest’ darknet market marketplace.
darknet sites markets are e-commerce sites designed to lie beyond the reach of regular search engines and are popular with criminals, as buyers and sellers are largely untraceable.
Police around the world have arrested 150 suspects in one of the largest-ever dark web sting operations.
The suspects arrested included several high-profile targets, involved in buying or selling illegal goods online, Europol said today (stock image)
Dark HunTOR, ‘was composed of a series of separate but complementary actions in Australia, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, dark darknet market link and the United States,’ the Hague-based Europol said.
In the United States alone, police arrested 65 people, while 47 were held in Germany, 24 in Britain, and darkmarket url four each in Italy and the Netherlands, among others.
A number of those arrested ‘were considered high-value targets’ by Europol.
Law agents also confiscated 26.7 million euros (£22.45million) in cash and virtual currencies, as well as 45 guns and 516lbs of drugs, including 25,000 ecstasy pills.
Italian police also shut down the ‘DeepSea’ and ‘Berlusconi’ marketplaces, ‘which together boasted over 100,000 announcements of illegal products’, said Europol, which coordinated the operation together with its twin judicial agency Eurojust.
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German police in January closed down the ‘DarkMarket’ online marketplace, used by its alleged operator, an Australian, to facilitate the sale of drugs, stolen credit card data and malware.
Europol said the arrest of the alleged operator, caught near the German-Danish border at the time, and the seizure of the criminal infrastructure provided ‘investigators across the world with a trove of evidence’.
German prosecutors at the time said DarkMarket came to light in the course of a major investigation against the web-hosting service Cyberbunker, located in a former NATO bunker in southwest Germany.
Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre EC3 has since been compiling intelligence packages to identify the key targets, the continent’s policing agency said.
The secret ‘darknet market‘ includes websites that can be assessed only with specific software or authorisations, ensuring anonymity for users.
Dark HunTOR, ‘was composed of a series of separate but complementary actions in Australia, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States,’ the Hague-based Europol (their HQ pictured) said
They have faced increased pressure from international law enforcement in recent months.
‘The point of operations such as this is to put criminals operating on the dark web on notice (that) the law enforcement community has the means and global partnerships to unmask them and hold them accountable for their illegal activities,’ Europol deputy director of operations Jean-Philippe Lecouffe said.
Rolf van Wegberg, cybercrime investigator at the TU Delft university said the operation signalled a break in the trend of recent police actions against suspected online criminals.
‘This kind of operations in the past looked at arresting the controllers of these marketplaces, we now see police services targeting the top sellers,’ he told investigative journalists at the Dutch KRO-NCRV public broadcaster.
A press conference about the operation has been set for 10am local time (2pm GMT) in Washington with the Department of Justice.
A government shutdown of dark web marketplaces AlphaBay and Hansa has merchants and dark market list consumers looking for a new home.
Authorities , the largest online marketplace for darkmarkets illegal goods, on July 4, and took down Hansa, the third largest, on Thursday. The sites, where people could buy drugs, guns and child pornography, had flourished since 2014, when a predecessor, Silk Road, was shut down.
Fueled by Tor browsers and cryptocurrencies that offer anonymity, AlphaBay, Hansa and other sites avoided much government detection, allowing in the wake of Silk Road’s demise. AlphaBay replaced as the biggest, growing to be 10 times larger.
When one dark market falls, buyers and sellers just move on to the next one.
The migration of buyers and sellers comes as authorities around the world crack down on digital marketplaces that cater to growing numbers of shadowy sales. at the time it was taken offline. By comparison, Silk Road had just 14,000 when the Federal Bureau of Investigation closed it four years ago.
Many of the sites . A recent study by the University of Manchester and think tank Rand Europe found 811 arms-related listings on . The researchers found nearly 60% of the weapons came from the US and most of the sales were headed to Europe. Worryingly, one gun bought on a cryptomarket was used in a .
FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe acknowledged shutting down such markets was like playing whack-a-mole. His agency would likely have to in the future, he said.
“Critics will say as we shutter one site, another will emerge,” McCabe said at a press conference. “But that is the nature of criminal work. It never goes away, you have to constantly keep at it, and you have to use every tool in your toolbox.”
One such tool: using a captured marketplace as a trap.
After the fall of AlphaBay, Dutch police said they saw traffic heading to Hansa spike eight-fold. That was something the cops were anticipating.
Dutch police had full control of Hansa on June 20, but waited a month before shutting it down hoping to catch the new users in marketplace chaos.
“We could identify and disrupt the regular criminal activity that was happening on Hansa darknet market but also sweep up all of those new users that were displaced from AlphaBay and looking for a new trading platform for their criminal activities,” Rob Wainwright, the Europol director, said at the press conference.
Dutch police now have the usernames, passwords and IP addresses of thousands of Hansa users, and are tracking them down.
An underground in flux
Dream Market seemed to be the next move for dark web vendors, darkmarket link but some question how reliable it is.
McAfee
The ploy has dark web darknet market users on edge. Many are concerned about whether the next available platform will be compromised as well. That has them questioning Dream Market, a marketplace that’s been in business since 2013 and benefitted from the shutdown of rivals.
“After the closure of the AlphaBay darknet market, many vendors expressed that they were moving their operations to Hansa and Dream darknet market,” Liv Rowley, an analyst at Flashpoint, said. “The shuttering of Hansa now leaves Dream the only remaining major option.”
Rowley noticed chatter on forums and subreddits pointing to Dream Market as the next AlphaBay, but people are wary after the Dutch police ploy.
Reddit users on several threads have expressed concerns the website has been compromised in a similar fashion. A user who speculated Hansa had been compromised in a thread posted returned on Thursday to warn that .
“This is a warning you will want to heed,” the user, who goes by , posted. “They are waiting to gather as many refugees from AB & Hansa as they can and then drop the hammer.”
Other marketplaces, like Tochka and Valhalla, could also rise in the vacuum AlphaBay and Hansa have left. Some smaller dark web markets are even appealing to those lost in AlphaBay’s shake-up.
Security company was offering vendors from AlphaBay a discount if they moved to their platform.
“The entire illegal underground is in flux right now,” Flashpoint’s Rowley said.
It’ll be quiet on the dark web until people can find a reliable marketplace again, but eventually they will, said Emily Wilson, the director of analysis at Terbium Labs.
She called the busts a “sizable hiccup” but not “an irreversible blow.”
It’s unclear who’ll emerge from the fallout. But the FBI estimates that more than 40,000 merchants are looking for a place to sell. And there are more than 200,000 customers looking for places to buy stuff they can’t get on Amazon.
With AlphaBay, the Amazon of illegal goods, now shut down, the market is fragmenting. If you want malware, there’s a darknet market for that on the dark web. The same for guns and for drugs. So business will go on, albeit less conveniently.
“For now, there are plenty of smaller and more specialized markets for vendors and buyers to continue trading,” Wilson said.
First published July 21, 8 a.m. ET
Update, 5:04 p.m.: Adds background on scope of the markets, weapons sales.
: Online abuse is as old as the internet and it’s only getting worse. It exacts a very real toll.
: CNET chronicles tech’s role in providing new kinds of accessibility.
BOSTON, April 28 (Reuters) – U.S.
officials on Tuesday arrested Roman Sterlingov, the alleged principal operator of cryptocurrency money laundering website Bitcoin Fog, according to a federal court filing.
Sterlingov, a citizen of Russia and Sweden, was detained in Los Angeles on money-laundering related charges.
Bitcoin Fog, darkmarket url launched in 2011, darknet magazine is one of the original Bitcoin “tumbler” or “mixer” services designed to help users anonymize cryptocurrencies payments, especially on so-called darknet markets onion online markets that trafficked in drugs and other illegal products, darknet marketdarknet markets onion url according to a legal statement accompanying the criminal complaint by Internal Revenue Service special agent Devon Beckett.
“Analysis of bitcoin transactions, financial records, Internet service provider records, email records and additional investigative information, identifies Roman Sterlingov as the principal operator of Bitcoin Fog,” Beckett wrote.
More than 1.2 million Bitcoin (BTC) — worth approximately $336 million at the time of the transactions — were sent through Bitcoin Fog, according to the Beckett statement.
A spokesperson for the U.S.
Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which is handling the case, did not immediately respond to a request for darkmarket url link comment.
Requests sent to email addresses tied to Sterlingov were not immediately returned. (Reporting by Lawrence Delevingne; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
BERLIN (AP) – German prosecutors announced Monday they have busted one of the world’s biggest international darknet market platforms for child pornography, used by more than 400,000 registered members.
Frankfurt prosecutors said in a statement together with the Federal Criminal Police Office that in mid-April three German suspects, said to be the administrators of the “Boystown” platform, were arrested along with a German user.
One of the three main suspects was arrested in Paraguay.
They also searched seven buildings in connection with the porn ring in mid-April in Germany.
The authorities said the platform was “one of the world’s biggest child pornography darknet market platforms” and had been active at least since 2019.
Pedophiles used it to exchange and watch pornography of children and toddlers, tor drug market most of them boys, from all over the world.
Prosecutors wrote that they found “images of most severe sexual abuse of toddlers” among the photos and video material.
“The platform had several forums and chats – the illegal pictures and videos were kept in the forums; in the chats, the members could communicate,” prosecutor Julia Bussweiler said.
“There were several language channels to facilitate the communication.”
A German police task force investigated the platform, its administrators and dark markets 2024 users for months in cooperation with Europol and darknet market markets links law enforcement authorities from the Netherlands, dark markets web darknet market Sweden, Australia, the United States and Canada, the statement said.
The three main suspects were a 40-year-old man from Paderborn, a 49-year-old man from Munich and a 58-year-old man from northern Germany who had been living in Paraguay for many years, the prosecutors’ statement said.
They worked as administrators of the site and gave advice to members on how to evade law enforcement when using the platform for illegal child pornography.
A fourth suspect, a 64-year-old man from Hamburg, is accused of being one of the most active users of the platform having allegedly uploaded more than 3,500 posts.
Germany has requested the extradition of the suspect who was arrested in Paraguay.
No names were given in line with Germany privacy regulations.
After the raids in mid-April, the online platform was shut down.
Germany’s top security official thanked the authorities for their success.
“This investigative success has a clear message: Those who assault the weakest aren’t safe anywhere,” German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said.
“That’s what investigators work for day and night, online and offline, globally.”
“We’ll do everything within our power to protect the kids from these disgusting crimes,” he added.
___
Christoph Noelting in Frankfurt, Germany, contributed to this story.
LONDON, Feb 11 (Reuters) – Criminals are using a small group of cryptocurrency brokers and services to launder hundreds of millions of dollars of dirty virtual money, research shared with Reuters showed on Thursday.
Just 270 cryptocurrency addresses, many connected to over-the-counter brokers, received $1.3 billion in illicit digital coins last year – some 55% of all criminal crypto flows identified by U.S.
blockchain researcher Chainalysis.
A cryptocurrency address is a set of random letters and numbers that represents a location on a virtual network. Bitcoin, for instance, can be sent from a particular address to others on its network.
The illegal use of cryptocurrencies has long worried regulators and law enforcement, dark market url with U.S.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde both calling for tighter oversight last month.
The calls for dark markets 2024 web darknet market list stricter rules have come as bigger investors, especially from the United States, have stepped up their embrace of bitcoin, turbo-charging a 1,000% rally for darknet market magazine the world’s biggest cryptocurrency since March last year.
Bitcoin hit an all-time high of over $48,200 on Tuesday after Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc revealed a $1.5 billion bet on the coin, leading some investors to claim cryptocurrencies were set to become a mainstream asset class.
Yet virtual money is subject to patchy regulation across the world, and remains popular with criminals.
On Wednesday, for instance, European police agency Europol said it assisted in the arrest of hackers suspected of stealing crypto assets worth $100 million.
The Chainalysis study website only covered crime that originates on the blockchain ledger that underpins most cryptocurrencies, including scams, cyberheists, Dark Market Onion ransomware and darknet market marketplaces used to buy contraband.
Also linked to the digital addresses were services connected to cryptocurrency exchanges.
Some may have received illicit funds inadvertently due to lax compliance checks, the study said.
The true scale of money laundering and other crime using cryptocurrencies – for example where criminals use bitcoin to launder traditional cash – is not known.
The United States, Russia and China received the highest volume of digital currency from illicit addresses, reflecting their high shares of crypto trading volumes, Chainalysis said.
Weapons, drugs and stolen identities are readily available on the dark web, a . To investigate where guns, ammunition and dark web darknet market urls guides to their use come from, the UK’s University of Manchester and think tank Rand Europe — or cryptomarkets — and found 811 listings relevant to the study, published Wednesday.
Most weapons were from the USA, where , and most sales were destined for Europe. A gun bought from the dark web was used in a .
“The dark web is both an enabler for the trade of illegal weapons already on the black darknet market and a potential source of diversion for weapons legally owned”, dark darknet market list said Giacomo Persi Paoli, the report’s lead author. “The ability for criminals and terrorists, as well as vulnerable or fixated individuals, to make virtually anonymous purchases is perhaps the most dangerous aspect.”
BERLIN (AP) – German prosecutors said Tuesday that they have taken down what they believe was the biggest illegal marketplace on the darknet Market Links and arrested its suspected operator.
The site, known as DarkMarket, was shut down on Monday, prosecutors in the southwestern city of Koblenz said.
All sorts of drugs, forged money, stolen or forged credit cards, anonymous mobile phone SIM cards and malware were among the things offered for sale there, they added.
German investigators were assisted in their months-long probe by U.S. authorities and by Australian, British, Danish, Swiss, Ukrainian and Moldovan police.
The marketplace had nearly 500,000 users and more than 2,400 vendors, prosecutors said.
They added that it processed more than 320,000 transactions, darknet market markets and Bitcoin and Monero cryptocurrency to the value of more than 140 million euros ($170 million) were exchanged.
The darknet market is a part of the web accessible only with specialized identity-cloaking tools.
The suspected operator, a 34-year-old Australian man, was arrested near the German-Danish border.
Prosecutors said a judge has ordered him held in custody pending possible formal charges, darknet market markets links and he hasn’t given any information to investigators.
More than 20 servers in Moldova and Ukraine were seized, German prosecutors said. They hope to find information on those servers about other participants in the marketplace.
Prosecutors said the move against DarkMarket originated in an investigation of a data processing center installed in a former NATO bunker in southwestern Germany that hosted sites dealing in drugs and other illegal activities.
WASHINGTON, April 5 (Reuters) – The U.S.
Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Tuesday on a Russia-based darknet marketDark market url site and dark web sites a cryptocurrency exchange that it said operates primarily out of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The sanctions against Russia-Based Hydra and best darknet markets currency exchange Garantex, darknet market markets onion address published on the Treasury Department’s website, “send a message today to criminals that you cannot hide on the darknet market or their forums, and you cannot hide in Russia or anywhere else in the world,” U.S.
An alleged fraudster dubbed The Crocodile of Wall Street over claims she laundered $4.5 billion in has been freed on bail – but her husband has been ordered to stay in jail.
Heather Morgan was freed by a judge Monday, pending trial by a federal court.
But her husband Ilya Lichtenstein remains behind bars due to prosecutors’ fears that he could seek immunity in , where he is also a citizen.
Judge Beryl Howell said on Monday that 31-year-old Morgan, referred as ‘Razzlekahn’ due to her rapping background, was no longer held in custody after the government deemed that she wasn’t as involved in the planning of the alleged crimes as her 34-year-ld husband, Ilya Lichtenstein, who was largely in control of the funds.
The judge also considered Morgan’s health issues as a factor, after she had recently had surgery to remove a lump in her breast.
With follow-up appointments expected, she will be closely monitored with an ankle bracelet GPS monitor while she is under house arrest.
Morgan has also been given restrictions on computer use, and a ban on carrying out cryptocurrency transactions.
The defense told the court that both defendants would guarantee to appear for all remaining court dates, and pointed out that both of their families, who were in court, were willing to bet their homes on it.
However, Howell finally ruled that there would be a significant ‘flight risk’ for Lichtenstein and agreed with federal prosecutors who insisted that just a portion of the millions in cryptocurrency that the couple stole could buy a new house or ‘buy each of their parents a private island.’
The judge also shared her concerns that Lichtenstein, who is a dual citizen of the United States and Russia, could seek refuge in a eastern European country, where he could possibly be granted immunity.
In this courtroom sketch, attorney Sam Enzer, center, sits between Heather Morgan, left, and her husband, darknet markets 2024 Ilya ‘Dutch’ Lichtenstein, in federal court on February 8, 2022, in New York.
The couple are accused of conspiring to launder billions of dollars in cryptocurrency stolen from the 2016 hack of a virtual currency exchange
This illustration photo shows Heather Morgan, also known as ‘Razzlekhan,’ on a phone in front of the Bitcoin logo displayed on a screen. Along with Lichtenstein, Morgan has been arrested for the couple’s Bitcoin laundering scheme but has been freed after paying bail
Federal prosecutors also revealed that Lichtenstein had a file on his computer titled ‘passport ideas,’ which included several darknet market links vendors that sell passports, bank cards and other forms of identification.
The New York couple was arrested earlier in February after they conspired to launder cryptocurrency that was stolen during the 2016 hack of Bitfinex, a virtual currency exchange platform, and currently estimated at $4.5 billion.
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Both are accused of using several techniques to launder Bitcoin, including using fake identifies to create accounts; coding computer programs to execute fast, automated transactions; depositing stolen funds in several accounts across one crypto exchange to cover their previous transactions; converting Bitcoin to other forms of cryptocurrency; and creating U.S.-based business accounts to wire their funds and make them seem legitimate.
Over five years, a hacker allegedly laundered 119,754 bitcoin through 2,000 transactions on Bitfinex’s website before transferring the crypto funds into Lichtenstein’s digital wallet.
The couple could face up to 25 years years behind bars if found guilty.
Lichtenstein (back) has not been granted bail after prosecutors alerted the judge of his Russian citizenship, where he could seek immunity, if he were no longer held into custody
Morgan has been labelled as an ‘integral player’ in the cryptocurrency laundering scheme but prosecutors identified Lichtenstein as the ‘brain’ behind the scheme’s operations
Bitfinex is a cryptocurrency exchange registered in the British Virgin Islands.
In August 2016, hackers were able to breach its security firewall before stealing about 120,000 bitcoin from its customers.
The amount that was stolen was worth roughly $70 million at the time, when the price of bitcoin was around $600.
At the time, Bitfinex announced to its customers that they would lose 36 percent of their funds to compensate for the losses from the incident.
It also created special digital tokens that were able to keep track of customers’ losses.
Some of the tokens could exchanged for dark web marketdarknet market 2024 shares of iFinex, the company that operates Bitfinex, while other tokens could be redeemed if the stolen bitcoins were recovered in the future.
The US Department of Justice announced that it would create a special judicial process for victims of the hack to reclaim their losses.
The hackers have never been identified.
Morgan and Lichtenstein were arrested by federal prosecutors of laundering the bitcoin stolen from Bitfinex, dark market 2024darknet market url but they are not being accused for actually stealing the bitcoin in the hack.
Authorities were able to recover $3.6B after seizing couple’s private keys to digital wallets after their arrest earlier this month.
has announced a spike in far-right and warned that political extremists are ‘the biggest threat to our country.’
The interior ministry reported another annual increase in anti-Semitic crimes, up by 15.7 per cent in 2020, with 2,351 total incidents – 94.6% of which were committed by a far-right suspect.
Of the total, 62 were acts of violence while the majority were antisemitic hate speech and other related crimes, dark web darknet market frequently on social media.
Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said: ‘This development in Germany is not only troubling, but in view of our history, deeply shameful.’
A protester with an Iron Cross draped over his back outside the Reichstag at a far-right demonstration against lockdown during the summer.
The symbol harks back to imperial Germany and was re-appropriated by the Nazis under Adolf Hitler
Far-right crime rose by 5.65 per cent in 2020, accounting for more than half of all politically-motivated criminality.
Seehofer said: ‘This shows again that right-wing extremism is the biggest threat for our country.’
It comes as Berlin police arrested a 53-year-old man on Tuesday on suspicion of sending dozens of threatening neo-Nazi letters to politicians, lawyers and journalists.
The suspect, whose name wasn’t released for privacy reasons, has previous convictions for ‘numerous crimes, including ones that were motivated by right-wing ideology,’ said prosecutors in Frankfurt, who are handling the case.
The letters were signed ‘NSU 2.0.’ A German group called the National Socialist Underground was responsible for a string of violent crimes between 1998 and 2011, including the racially motivated killings of nine men with immigrant backgrounds and a police officer.
The group’s name was derived from the full name of the Nazi, or National Socialist, party.
Police think the suspect sent almost 100 letters to dozens of people and organizations across Germany and Austria since 2018.
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German news agency dpa reported that investigators think the suspect may have obtained personal data on the people he targeted from official records or darknet market links forums.
German security agencies warned of the growing threat of violent far-right extremism.
In July 2019, a regional politician from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party was killed by a neo-Nazi; three months later, a gunman tried to force his way into a synagogue on Yom Kippur, killing two people.
Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, said the German numbers revealed by the interior ministry today highlighted a broader issue.
‘This is a wake-up call, not just for Germany, but for the whole world,’ he said.
‘These figures should ring alarm bells, because we are seeing similar trends across the Western world.’
In 2020, Germany recorded a 72.4% increase in anti-immigrant crimes, up to 5,298 total cases over 3,073 in 2019, Seehofer said.
A bullet lies on the street in Hanau in February, 2020, after a right-wing terrorist shot nine people before turning the gun on himself
Forensic officers investigating in Hanau after the shooting which targeted immigrants in February, 2020
In the most deadly incident, nine people with immigrant backgrounds were shot dead in Hanau, near Frankfurt, in February by a gunman who had called for genocide.
Authorities have raised concerns about the role the Alternative for Germany party allegedly played in stoking a climate of resentment toward immigrants and the government.
The party, which placed third in Germany’s 2017 election, has moved steadily to the right in recent years, drawing increasing scrutiny from the country’s domestic intelligence agency.
On Tuesday, Alternative for Germany’s section in Berlin condemned a member who appeared to lament the absence of attacks on Merkel.
The news website Business Insider reported that AfD’s former chairman in Berlin, Guenter Brinker, forwarded a message stating that ‘either that piece of dirt is so well protected that nobody can get at her, darknet market markets links or don’t the Germans have any balls?’
Brinker said later that he had mistakenly forwarded the message and regretted doing so, and that he rejected ‘all forms of hatred and violence.’
Many in the AfD have expressed support for, and participated in, the regular protests in Germany against lockdown measures, organized by the so-called Querdenker movement.
Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (pictured on Tuesday) said: ‘This (anti-Semitic) development in Germany is not only troubling, but in view of our history, deeply shameful.’
The demonstrations have become increasingly violent, and the country’s domestic intelligence service late last month said it had put some members of the loose-knit Querdenker movement under observation.
The protests have brought together a broad range of demonstrators, including people opposing vaccinations, others who deny the existence of the coronavirus, mask opponents, conspiracy theorists and others.
Seehofer said the protests have also attracted neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists, and have regularly become violent.
‘At these gatherings organized by the so-called Querdenker movement, attacks are directed against police officers and dark markets the press,’ Seehofer said.
‘Of the 260 reported crimes against journalists, 112 were related to corona’ protests, he said.
‘I want to say here very clearly: These acts of violence are no longer about exercising a constitutional right (to demonstrate), but are acts of violence of a criminal nature that I condemn in the strongest possible terms.’