WASHINGTON, Oct 26 (Reuters) – An international operation targeting trafficking in opioids on a clandestine part of the internet called the darknet market has led to about 150 arrests in the United States and Europe and the seizure of drugs, cash and guns, U.S.
and European authorities said on Tuesday.
The crackdown, called Operation Dark HunTor, was announced at a U.S. Justice Department news conference where Deputy U.S Attorney General Lisa Monaco warned cyberspace drug sellers: “There is no dark internet. We can and we will shed a light.”
Jean-Philippe Lecouffe, deputy director of the international police agency Europol, hailed the results of Operation Dark HunTor as “spectacular.” He said the operation sends a message that “no one is beyond the reach of law enforcement, even on the dark web.” The darknet market and dark web are related terms concerning a part of the internet accessible only using a specialized web browser and the assortment of internet sites residing there.
An opioid epidemic has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone in the past two decades due to overdoses from prescription painkillers and illegal substances, constituting an enduring public health crisis.
The Dark HunTor operation produced arrests of 150 people accused of being drug traffickers and others accused of engaging in sales of illicit goods and dark web link services.
There were 65 arrests in the United States, 47 in Germany, dark web darknet market links 24 in the United Kingdom, four each in the Netherlands and Italy, three in France, two in Switzerland and one in Bulgaria, the Justice Department said.
The department added that the operation resulted in seizures of more than $31.6 million in cash and virtual currencies as well as 45 firearms.
It added that about 234 kilograms (515 pounds) of drugs including more than 200,000 ecstasy, fentanyl, oxycodone, hydrocodone and methamphetamine pills were seized, along with counterfeit medicines.
Kenneth Polite, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said such trafficking presents “a global threat and it requires a global response.”
The Justice Department said the crackdown built on operations conducted in late 2020 and early 2021 to disrupt dark web trafficking.
It said that in January, an international crackdown targeted DarkMarket, darknet markets url the world’s largest dark web international marketplace.
(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Will Dunham)
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 , darkmarket link 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, dark darknet market url 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, dark market onion 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 darkmarket 2024 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.
COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) – A federal judge rejected a plea agreement on Wednesday that called for 15 to 21 years in prison for a man authorities described as the world´s largest purveyor darkmarket url of child pornography.
Eric Eoin Marques is entitled to withdraw his guilty plea from last year if the judge departs from the sentencing range prosecutors and defense attorneys recommended.
But U.S.
District Judge Theodore Chuang isn’t bound by the terms of the Justice Department´s plea deal.
“It’s too flawed, and I also don’t agree with the outcome,” Chuang said.
The judge said he’s inclined to give Marques a longer sentence for operating a web hosting service that enabled users to anonymously access millions of illicit images and videos, many depicting the rape and torture of infants and toddlers.
The judge criticized a provision of the plea deal that wouldn’t give Marques credit for six years he spent in custody in Ireland darknet marketbest darknet markets url while fighting extradition after his 2013 arrest in Dublin. Chuang said he can’t tell the federal Bureau of Prisons to refrain from counting those years when Marques likely is entitled to get credit for that time.
The judge said he isn’t prepared to impose a sentence of 15 to 21 years if Marques does get credit for those six years.
“I want a sentence higher than that,” Chuang added.
“It’s not going to be 21 minus 6 to 15. That’s not going to happen. I don’t have to follow what you all did. It’s clear neither of you really understood what you were doing.”
Chuang also expressed frustration that prosecutors and defense lawyers still couldn’t agree on certain facts of the case even after spelling them out in writing as part of the deal.
“I certainly think the process was such that I shouldn’t defer to the parties’ agreement when I’m not sure they really thought it out that carefully,” he said.
Defense attorney Brendan Hurson told the judge that his remarks give them a “platform to negotiate further.”
“If we can’t get somewhere, then we would ask for some time to set a trial date,” Hurson said.
Chuang instructed the attorneys to provide him with a status report by June 25.
Marques, a 35-year-old dual citizen of the U.S.
and Ireland, was extradited to Maryland in March 2019, and pleaded guilty in February 2020 to conspiracy to advertise child pornography. He faced a mandatory minimum of 15 years and a maximum of 30 years in prison before the plea deal.
Marques created and operated a free, anonymous web hosting service, called “Freedom Hosting,” on the darknet market between 2008 and 2013.
The darknet market is part of the internet but hosted within an encrypted network. It is accessible only through anonymity-providing tools, such as the Tor browser, and onion dark website markets allows users to access websites without revealing their IP addresses.
Marques´ attorneys have questioned how federal investigators were able to pierce the Tor network´s anonymity and trace the IP address of the server to a web hosting company in Roubaix, France.
“This anonymity is notoriously difficult for government investigators to penetrate,” they wrote.
Defense attorneys said they received an initial answer to that question when the government revealed “vague details” of how they discovered the IP address and location of the server.
“It appears that this disclosure was delayed, in part, because the investigative techniques employed were, until recently, classified,” they wrote in December 2019.
Investigators found what appeared to be more than 8.5 million images and videos of child pornography on the Freedom Hosting server, including nearly 2 million images that were new to authorities, according to a court filing that accompanied Marques’ guilty plea.
Marques was living in Ireland at the time of the offenses.
He used the encrypted server in France to host more than 200 websites that site administrators and users used to upload and download child pornography.
In 2013, FBI agents in Maryland connected to the network and accessed a child pornography bulletin board with more than 7,700 members and more than 22,000 posts.
Agents downloaded more than 1 million files from another website on the network, nearly all of which depicted sexually explicit images of children.
In July 2013, Irish authorities searched Marques’ home and vehicle and detained him. When investigators entered his home, Marques moved toward his computer but was subdued before he could turn it off, authorities said.
After his release from custody, Marques purchased a new laptop and logged into his server to lock out the FBI and other law enforcement, the filing says.
Authorities seized nearly $155,000 in U.S.
currency from Marques. During an August 2013 extradition hearing, Marques said his business had been “very successful” and profitable.
In an April 28 court filing, a prosecutor said a government witness was prepared to testify at Wednesday’s sentencing hearing that law enforcement had identified Marques as the largest purveyor of child pornography in the world and that he made approximately $3.6 million in U.S.
currency from his servers.
___
This version corrects that the judge set a June 25 deadline for a status report from attorneys, darknet marketplace not a status conference for that date.
ZURICH, April 8 (Reuters) – The former chief of logistics for a regional Swiss police force appeared in court on Thursday accused of falsely buying guns and bullets on behalf of his employer and selling them via the darknet market.
Prosecutors allege that the man, who has not been identified, ordered weaponry and ammunition when he worked for the cantonal police in Schywz, a mountainous canton near Zurich.
Swiss police investigating the case recovered 80 guns and dark web sites tens of thousands of bullets when they searched his home during the investigation. Court documents did not say to whom the weaponry was sold.
The 58-year-old, a civilian law enforcement employee, had ordered the material on behalf of police but instead used them for his own private benefit, court documents said.
In the case, whose proceedings at the Swiss Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona began on Thursday, the defendant is also accused of selling a “large number of weapons without authorisation to various persons” between 2012 and dark web darknet market links 2013.
He is accused of having offered the weapons through a darknet market account and having worked with an accomplice who has since been prosecuted in Germany.
He denies the charges.
Swiss broadcaster SRF said the accused handed over the weapons, which included automatic rifles and pistols, to his accomplice in a garbage bag at his home.
The accomplice, it said, then drove the material to a car park on a mountain road where the sales took place.
The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) launched the case against the man in 2018 after getting information from Germany. The OAG said the accused had made a profit of 180,000 Swiss francs ($195,000) from the transactions.
A two-day hearing began on Thursday, with an verdict expected on April 22.
($1 = 0.9251 Swiss francs) (Reporting by John Revill Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Australians are officially the world’s biggest binge drinkers, but Britain and the US don’t lag far behind – featuring in the top five of the latest Global Drug Survey.
Denmark and Finland ranked at second and third in the survey of more than 32,000 people from 22 countries which collected data from December 2020 to March 2021.
The data also shows that the Irish felt the most remorse after drinking.
Researchers believes extending Covid lockdowns contributed to the results
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The survey found that the pandemic saw more experiment with ‘microdosing’ with psychedelics but people on average consumed less , cannabis, cocaine and LSD.
According to the findings unveiled this week, Australians got drunk an average 27 times in 2021, almost double the global average of 15.
Australians filled up their beer or wine glass with booze two days per week on average, the survey revealed.
It also found Australians regret their intoxication on 24 per cent of occasions – compared to the 21 per cent global average, with women more likely to regret getting drunk than men.
Britons joined the United States, Denmark and Finland in the top five drunkest nations after Australia
‘Drank too much too quickly’ was the most common regret, claimed by nearly half of those surveyed
But the Irish felt the most remorse after drinking this year, regretting it about a quarter of the time.
The Danish felt the least regretful, and were also the second drunkest nation after Australia in 2021.
‘Drank too much too quickly’ was the most common regret, claimed by 49 per cent of those surveyed.
Six per cent said they felt anxious about Covid while four per cent said it was because they ‘hadn’t drank for ages’ due to pandemic restrictions.
Australians filled up their beer or wine glass with booze two days per week on average, the survey revealed
Vinegar Yard in London. Britons joined the Australia, the United States, Denmark and Finland in the top five drunkest nations
Two percent drank too much at a virtual party.
Britons joined the United States, Denmark and Finland dark web market in the top five drunkest nations after Australia.
France leads the world for the average number of drinks consumed in a year, enjoying more than 132 glasses of booze, followed by New Zealand on 122, while Australians had 106 drinks per year on average.
Despite this, the use of almost all drug classes fell in 2021 compared with last year’s sample.
Alcohol consumption fell to 92.8 per cent to 94 per cent and 51 per cent said they had smoked cigarettes in 2021 compared to 60.8 per cent in 2020.
The report said this could be due to the older age of the sample group or that most drugs were simply used less amidst the pandemic.
The Danish felt the least regretful after drinking and were also the second drunkest nation after Australia in 2021
France leads the world for darknet market sites the average number of drinks consumed in a year, enjoying more than 132 glasses of booze
People got less drunk over the lockdown and the rate of people seeking emergency help after consuming drugs fell for darknet market links most substances too.
However the report’s finding suggest that microdosing, which is when a very small amount of a substance is taken to observe its effects on the body, ‘may be on the increase among those who use psychedelics’.
One in four of this group said they had microdosed with LSD or psilocybin (more commonly known as ‘magic mushrooms’) in the last 12 months.
One third of those who had taken psychedelics before also experimented microdosing with MDMA, ketamine, DMT, and 1P-LSD.
The study also found that although the pandemic may have locked us in, most people who used illegal drugs still obtained substances in-person
For those who used illegal drugs, most sourced them in person despite Covid restrictions making this difficult for many
The study also found that although the pandemic may have locked us in, most people who used illegal drugs still obtained substances in-person.
Where this occurred, people were most likely to get their supply from friends.
Some 1 in 10 mentioned digital sources and reported darknet markets oniondarknet markets for drugs other than cannabis, which was more often accessed through apps.
The first question of the survey asked respondents to sum up 2020 in one word.
After translating responses the report said that the ‘main theme was a negative sentiment’ towards the year, with ‘sh**’, ‘f***ed’ and ‘challenging’ dominating the general consensus.
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 dark darknet market 2024 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, four cases in the United Kingdom, three cases in Austria and darknet market lists one case in Sweden. Police said investigations are still ongoing to identify people behind these dark web market 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 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, the head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, said in a statement.
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, darknet market lists 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
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 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, dark web darknet market 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.
BERLIN (AP) – German investigators on Tuesday shut down a Russian-language darknet markets onion address marketplace that they say specialized in drug dealing, darknet market websites seizing bitcoin worth 23 million euros ($25.3 million).
Prosecutors in Frankfurt described the “Hydra darknet market” platform as the world’s biggest illegal darknet market marketplace.
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, darkmarket link German prosecutors said. They added that, as well as illegal drugs, forged documents, 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.”
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 darknet 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 darkmarket link 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 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
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 darknet market, a marketplace that’s been in business since 2013 and benefitted from the shutdown of rivals.
“After the closure of the AlphaBay market, many vendors expressed that they were moving their operations to Hansa and Dream 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 markets 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.
BERLIN (AP) – German prosecutors said Friday they have filed charges against four men over their alleged involvement with a major international platform for child pornography that was taken down last year.
Investigators say the “BoysTown” platform, which operated on the darknet market, had more than 400,000 members.
Pedophiles used it to exchange and watch pornography of children and toddlers, dark web market linksdarknet market url most of them boys, from all over the world. It was shut down in April 2021.
The suspects are aged between 41 and darknet markets onion address dark website 65, Frankfurt prosecutors said in a statement. Their names weren’t released, darkmarket url in keeping with German privacy rules.
They face charges that include spreading and producing child pornography and sexual abuse of children.
Two of the men are accused of building the platform in 2019. One of them also allegedly sexually abused two children. The other was extradited in October from Paraguay, dark market 2024 where he had lived for a few years.
A third suspect is accused of acting as an administrator and moderator for the platform as well as sexually abusing two children. Prosecutors say that the fourth man was “one of the most active users” of the platform.
All four are in custody.
The Frankfurt state court now has to decide whether the case will go to trial and if so when. Prosecutors said investigations of other suspected members of the platform are continuing.