THE HAGUE, Jan 12 (Reuters) – An online marketplace called “DarkMarket” that sold illegal drugs has been taken down in an operation led by German law enforcement agencies, dark market markets European police agency Europol said on Tuesday.
The darknet market had almost 500,000 users with 2,400 sellers, Europol said in a statement.
Transactions conducted on it in cryptocurrency were worth more than 140 million euros ($170 million).
“The vendors on the marketplace mainly traded all kinds of drugs and sold counterfeit money, stolen or counterfeit credit card details, anonymous SIM cards and malware,” Europol said.
Agencies from Australia, Denmark, Moldova, dark web market Ukraine, United Kingdom and the United States also took part in the operation, darkmarkets which Europol helped to coordinate.
darknet market markets are e-commerce sites designed to lie beyond the reach of regular search engines.
They are popular with criminals, as buyers and sellers are largely untraceable. Payments on the DarkMarket were made in bitcoin and monero.
The investigation was led by German prosecutors and an Australian citizen who is alleged to be the operator of DarkMarket was arrested near the German-Danish border last weekend, Europol said.
More that 20 servers were seized in Moldova and Ukraine.
(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
LONDON, Jan 6 (Reuters) – Crime involving cryptocurrencies hit an all-time high of $14 billion last year, blockchain researcher Chainalysis said on Thursday, a record that comes as regulators call for more powers over the fast-growing sector.
Crypto received by digital wallet addresses linked to illicit activity including scams, darknet market markets and darknet market sites ransomware jumped 80% from a year earlier, Chainalysis said in a report.
The activity represented just 0.15% of total crypto transaction volumes, its lowest ever.
Overall volumes soared to $15.8 trillion in 2021, up over five-fold from a year earlier, dark web link U.S.-based Chainalysis said. Digital assets, from bitcoin to non-fungible tokens, exploded in popularity in 2021 amid an embrace from institutional investors and major companies.
Newcomers have been drawn to the promise of quick gains touted by crypto backers, as well as hopes that bitcoin offers a hedge against soaring inflation. Yet cryptocurrencies are still subject to patchy regulation, leaving investors with little recourse against crime.
Financial watchdogs and dark market url web marketplaces policymakers from Washington to Frankfurt have fretted over the use of crypto for dark web market list money laundering, with some urging lawmakers to grant them greater powers over the industry.
“Criminal abuse of cryptocurrency creates huge impediments for continued adoption, heightens the likelihood of restrictions being imposed by governments, and worst of all victimizes innocent people around the world,” Chainalysis said.
Driving the increase in crime was an explosion of scams and theft at decentralized finance – DeFi – platforms, it said.
DeFi sites – which offer lending, insurance and other financial services while bypassing traditional gatekeepers such as banks – have been plagued by problems that include flaws in underlying code and opaque governance.
Overall cryptocurrency theft grew over five-fold from 2020, with around $3.2 billion worth of coins stolen last year.
Around $2.2 billion of those funds, some 72% of the total, were stolen from DeFi sites.
Scams at DeFi platforms – such as “rug pulls,” where developers set up phony investment opportunities before disappearing with investors’ cash – hit $7.8 billion, an 82% jump from 2021, Chainalysis said.
(Reporting by Tom Wilson; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)
BERLIN (AP) – German investigators on Tuesday shut down a Russian-language darknet market marketplace that they say specialized in drug dealing, darknet market markets url seizing bitcoin worth 23 million euros ($25.3 million).
They said they seized its server infrastructure in Germany.
The shutdown was the result of investigations underway since August, in which U.S. authorities participated.
The U.S. Treasury Department also announced Tuesday it was sanctioning Hydra as well as a virtual currency exchange, Garantex, that operates out of Russia.
The department said both entities have been used to help finance the activities of ransomware gangs.
The Hydra platform had been active at least since 2015, darknet markets 2024 German prosecutors said. They added that, as well as illegal drugs, forged documents, dark web darknet market urls intercepted data and “digital services” were offered for sale.
They said that it had about 17 million registered customer accounts and more than 19,000 registered sellers.
Prosecutors said the platform had sales of at least 1.23 billion euros in 2020.
Cybercrime research firm Elliptic said Hydra has facilitated over $5 billion in bitcoin transactions since 2015, receiving a boost after the closure of a key competitor in 2017.
“Listings on the site also included forged documents, data (such as credit card information) and digital services,” Elliptic said.
“Products were advertised for sale in a number of countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.”
WASHINGTON, darkmarket April 5 (Reuters) – The U.S.
Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Tuesday on a Russia-based darknet marketdark market list site and a cryptocurrency exchange that it said operates primarily out of Moscow and dark web market web sites St. Petersburg.
The sanctions against Russia-Based Hydra and currency exchange Garantex, tor drug darknet market 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.
German police have taken down one of the world’s largest child porn sites with over 400,000 members and best darknet market markets arrested four people accused of running it.
The site, known as BOYSTOWN and dark web darknet market links accessible only via the so-called Darkweb, had existed since July 2019 and dark market list was used for the worldwide exchange of child porn.
Investigators spent months probing the site and those behind it, dark web market urls before arresting three main suspects along with a fourth man in raids last month.
German police have taken down a child porn site with over 400,00 members and arrested four men in connection with running it (file image)
Officers say the main suspects are a 40-year-old from Paderborn, a 49-year-old from Munich and a 58-year-old from northern Germany who had been living in Paraguay for many years – all of whom are accused of operating the site.
The fourth man, a 64-year-old from Hamburg, is accused of uploading more than 3,500 images and videos to the site since becoming a member in 2019 – making him one of the most prolific contributors.
Police said the site was designed to allow the international exchange of child abuse material by its members, mainly focusing on the abuse of young boys.
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‘Among the images and video recordings shared were also recordings of the most severe sexual abuse of young children,’ prosecutors said.
Members were also able to speak with one-another via chat areas of the website and voice channels.
Officers say the three main suspects also provided members with instructions on anonymous surfing to minimize the risk of detection.
The site was detected by a task for set up in Germany, but aided by investigators in the Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, the United States and Canada.
Following the raids and arrests, the BOYSTOWN platform has been taken down, police added.
A government shutdown of dark web marketplaces AlphaBay and Hansa has merchants and consumers looking for a new home.
Authorities , the largest online marketplace for 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, darknet market 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 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, dark market 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 darknet market seemed to be the next move for dark web vendors, but some question how reliable it is.
McAfee
The ploy has dark web 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 darknet 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 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.
THE HAGUE, Jan 12 (Reuters) – An online marketplace called “DarkMarket” that sold illegal drugs has been taken down in an operation led by German law enforcement agencies, European police agency Europol said on Tuesday.
The darknet market had almost 500,000 users with 2,400 sellers, Europol said in a statement.
Transactions conducted on it in cryptocurrency were worth more than 140 million euros ($170 million).
“The vendors on the marketplace mainly traded all kinds of drugs and sold counterfeit money, stolen or counterfeit credit card details, anonymous SIM cards and malware,” Europol said.
Agencies from Australia, Denmark, Moldova, Ukraine, darknet market site United Kingdom and the United States also took part in the operation, which Europol helped to coordinate.
Darknet markets are e-commerce sites designed to lie beyond the reach of regular search engines.
They are popular with criminals, tor drug darknet market as buyers and sellers are largely untraceable. Payments on the DarkMarket were made in bitcoin and monero.
The investigation was led by German prosecutors and an Australian citizen who is alleged to be the operator of DarkMarket was arrested near the German-Danish border last weekend, Europol said.
More that 20 servers were seized in Moldova and Ukraine.
(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
The US Justice Department announced the largest dark web bust it has ever helped carry out, seizing more than 1,100 pounds of drugs from 179 alleged online dealers around the world. The US worked with police in Europe to carry out the investigation, seizing more than $6.5 million in cash and virtual currencies.
Operation DisrupTor — named after the frequently used to access the dark web — was led by police in Germany, along with US law enforcement agencies and Europol.
The majority of the arrests took place in the US with 121 cases, followed by 42 cases in Germany, eight cases in the Netherlands, darknet market markets links four cases in the United Kingdom, three cases in Austria and one case in Sweden. Police said investigations are still ongoing to identify people behind these dark web accounts.
The for hidden parts of the internet that you can’t easily discover through an online darknet market marketplaces have grown in popularity at an alarming rate and allow drug traffickers to openly advertise and take orders from anywhere in the world,” Rosen said. “The dark net invites criminals into our homes and provides unlimited access to illegal commerce.”
Operation DisrupTor used information from another major darknet markets onion market raided in April 2019, FBI Director Christopher Wray said. , one of the largest dark web marketplaces online.
Investigators said they’ve tracked down more than 18,000 listed sales to alleged customers in at least 35 states and in several countries around the world. Wray noted that there’s been a spike in opioid-related overdose deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic and that the FBI will continue investigating dark web drug markets.
“Today’s announcement sends a strong message to criminals selling or buying illicit goods on the dark web: the hidden internet is no longer hidden, and your anonymous activity is not anonymous,” Edvardas Sileris, dark darknet market url the head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, said in a statement.
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 darknet market lists Lichtenstein and dark market 2024 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, dark markets 2024 where he could possibly be granted immunity.
In this courtroom sketch, attorney Sam Enzer, center, sits between Heather Morgan, left, and her husband, Ilya ‘Dutch’ Lichtenstein, in federal court on February 8, 2022, dark market list 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, darknet market 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 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 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, 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.
LONDON, darknet markets onion address Jan 6 (Reuters) – Crime involving cryptocurrencies hit an all-time high of $14 billion last year, blockchain researcher Chainalysis said on Thursday, a record that comes as regulators call for more powers over the fast-growing sector.
Crypto received by digital wallet addresses linked to illicit activity including scams, darknet market markets and ransomware jumped 80% from a year earlier, Chainalysis said in a report.
The activity represented just 0.15% of total crypto transaction volumes, its lowest ever.
Overall volumes soared to $15.8 trillion in 2021, up over five-fold from a year earlier, darkmarket list link U.S.-based Chainalysis said. Digital assets, dark web markets from bitcoin to non-fungible tokens, exploded in popularity in 2021 amid an embrace from institutional investors and darknet markets 2024 major companies.
Newcomers have been drawn to the promise of quick gains touted by crypto backers, as well as hopes that bitcoin offers a hedge against soaring inflation. Yet cryptocurrencies are still subject to patchy regulation, darkmarket link leaving investors with little recourse against crime.
Financial watchdogs and policymakers from Washington to Frankfurt have fretted over the use of crypto for money laundering, with some urging lawmakers to grant them greater powers over the industry.
“Criminal abuse of cryptocurrency creates huge impediments for continued adoption, heightens the likelihood of restrictions being imposed by governments, and worst of all victimizes innocent people around the world,” Chainalysis said.
Driving the increase in crime was an explosion of scams and theft at decentralized finance – DeFi – platforms, darknet market marketplace it said.
DeFi sites – which offer lending, insurance and other financial services while bypassing traditional gatekeepers such as banks – have been plagued by problems that include flaws in underlying code and opaque governance.
Overall cryptocurrency theft grew over five-fold from 2020, with around $3.2 billion worth of coins stolen last year.
Around $2.2 billion of those funds, some 72% of the total, were stolen from DeFi sites.
Scams at DeFi platforms – such as “rug pulls,” where developers set up phony investment opportunities before disappearing with investors’ cash – hit $7.8 billion, an 82% jump from 2021, Chainalysis said.
(Reporting by Tom Wilson; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)