The Government Technology & Services Coalition’s Homeland Security Today (HSToday) is the premier news and information resource for the homeland security community, dedicated to elevating the discussions and insights that can support a safe and secure nation. A non-profit magazine and media platform, HSToday provides readers with the whole story, placing facts and comments in context to inform debate and drive realistic solutions to some of the nation’s most vexing security challenges. Europol contributed to the efficiency and effectiveness of the international investigations. The agency organised multiple coordination meetings that made it possible for authorities to exchange critical information for the investigation. During the action days and the preliminary investigations, Eurojust coordinated the execution of mutual legal assistance and European Investigation Orders. The seizure of the Hydra servers and cryptocurrency wallets containing $25 million worth of bitcoin was made this morning in Germany by the German Federal Criminal Police (the Bundeskriminalamt), in coordination with U.S. law enforcement.
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The complaint affidavit identifies several cases that have been filed in the United States against WSM vendors. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in collaboration with Europol, the Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement Team, and various national and international partners, announced the results of Operation RapTOR May 22. This historic takedown, led by Europol, resulted in the highest number of seizures in JCODE’s history. The police said late last week that Crimemarket had over 180,000 registered users and could be accessed via both the dark web and freely via the publicly accessible surface web (“clearnet”). It added that a number of the suspects were considered “high-value targets” by police, and that investigations to identify additional people behind dark web accounts were still ongoing. Europol said the operation seized more than €50.8 million ($53.4 million) in cash and virtual currencies, as well as 850kg of drugs — including over 258 kg of amphetamines, 43kg of cocaine, 43kg of MDMA and over 10 kg of LSD and ecstasy pills — alongside 117 firearms.
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Users face vulnerabilities like market volatility, scams involving fake escrow services, compromised wallets, or theft through phishing schemes targeting crypto transactions. Furthermore, inexperienced users unfamiliar with secure cryptocurrency practices are particularly susceptible to these threats, risking the loss of their entire funds. As an active administrator in hosting Hydra’s servers, Pavlov allegedly conspired with the other operators of Hydra to further the site’s success by providing the critical infrastructure that allowed Hydra to operate and thrive in a competitive darknet market environment. In doing so, Pavlov is alleged to have facilitated Hydra’s activities and allowed Hydra to reap commissions worth millions of dollars generated from the illicit sales conducted through the site. Europol’s Deputy Executive Director of Operations, Jean-Philippe Lecouffe, called the takedown a decisive strike against a platform that had become a critical node in the global supply chain for some of the world’s most dangerous substances. It is not clear which German authorities were behind the seizure, although Europol described it as happening alongside the seizure of the Hydra marketplace’s infrastructure.
In 2023, the dark web attracted an average of 2.7 million daily users, with Germany now leading as the country with the highest number of Tor users, surpassing the United States for the first time in years. It’s reported that from when it was constructed in May 2019 until it was shuttered in early 2021, users exchanged about €140 million worth of cryptocurrency. Hosted in a former NATO bunker, the initial organisation was said to have operated networks like ‘Wall Street Market’ and ‘Fraudsters’ – kind of like an eBay for the dark side of the internet. Europol said police operations took place last week across Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain and Sweden to dismantle the dark web Archetyp Market. More recently, in September 2024, the BKA and ZIT announced the dismantling of dozens of cryptocurrency exchanges that they accused of enabling money laundering and other offenses. The BKA and ZIT coordinated with Dutch authorities during their investigation, specifically the Zeeland-West-Brabant Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Zeeland-West-Brabant Police.
Combating Transnational Crime
The seizure is the result of parallel investigations and close coordination between German, American and Lithuanian law enforcement authorities, including the FBI, DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) and IRS-CI (Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation) since October 2022. Before taking down CrimeMarket, German authorities worked alongside international agencies to bust the prolific LockBit ransomware gang. After taking down LockBit’s website, the criminals regrouped to launch a series of devastating attacks on critical infrastructure in various countries around the world, including the US, Canada, and Britain. Platform shutdowns can disrupt logistics, lead to arrests and seize goods, but they do not break apart the dark web’s recovery architecture. Just as Archetyp filled the void left by the dismantling of other online drug markets that existed before it, its successor may already be taking shape.
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The BKA also said 20 additional properties were searched, mainly targeting Archtetyp moderators and vendors. In total, police seized 47 smartphones, 45 computers, as well as narcotics and other assets, which will be analyzed for further investigative leads. Launched in 2020, Archetyp was Europe’s longest-serving drug market at the time of its takedown last week, and authorities today confirmed a number of key arrests. Security researchers have been monitoring forums within the cybercriminal underworld to investigate the leading markets operating in 2024.
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In 2019, there were approximately 8,400 active sites on the dark web, selling thousands of products and services daily. Today’s cybercriminals spread their activities across multiple platforms, making them harder to track and shut down. DarkMarket was somewhat different to other markets on the dark web as it prohibited the sale of certain items. This included the likes of weapons, fentanyl and images of child abuse – unfortunately, the kind of things often found on the marketplaces. Investigators seized the Nemesis Market platform’s server infrastructure in Germany and Lithuania on Wednesday, as well as cryptocurrency worth 94,000 euros ($102,000), Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office said in a joint statement with Frankfurt prosecutors. Nemesis was founded in 2021 and has been growing rapidly since then, according to the BKA.
A defendant linked to Wall Street Market was charged yesterday in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. Marcos Paulo De Oliveira-Annibale, 29, of Sao Paulo, Brazil, also faces federal drug distribution and money laundering charges for allegedly acting as a moderator who, among other things, mediated disputes between vendors and their customers. Annibale, who used the online monikers “MED3LIN,” also acted as a public relations representative for WSM by, among others things, promoting WSM on websites such as Reddit, according to the complaint. The case naming Annibale was unsealed today when Brazilian authorities executed a search warrant at his residence. 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.
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The takedown follows years of intensive investigative work to map the platform’s technical architecture and identify the individuals behind it. By tracing financial flows, analysing digital forensic evidence, and working closely with partners on the ground, authorities were able to deliver a decisive blow to one of the most prolific drug markets on the dark web. Understanding these contrasting use-cases underscores the complex role dark-web marketplaces play in contemporary digital society, serving both legitimate needs and presenting significant challenges for security and law enforcement agencies worldwide. Ideal marketplaces support anonymous browsing through networks like Tor and I2P, utilize privacy-focused cryptocurrencies such as Monero, and implement measures to prevent tracking and transaction tracing.
Administrator Arrested
Visitors to the cybercrime website were greeted on Thursday with a red banner announcing the takeover. At the bottom, the police placed an animated spaceship reminiscent of a 1990s video game called Nemesis. Value of the bitcoin and monero virtual currencies traded on DarkMarket totaled 140 million euros ($170 million euros). Officers said they also seized more than 20 servers in Moldova and Ukraine that DarkMarket relied on to function. These sanctions are an attempt by the Biden administration to show that virtual currency will not be able to evade U.S. and international sanctions on Russia or other criminal actors.
Among other things, authorities said the market was being used for criminal transactions, money laundering and abundant sales of illegal narcotics. Hydra Market was a Russian-language marketplace that had operated via the Tor network since at least 2015 and was known for extensive drug trafficking, according to German authorities. The market’s 17 million known customers were also known to buy and sell forged documents and stolen credit cards, they said. The drug marketplace’s infrastructure was seized in the Netherlands, and police in Germany and Sweden confiscated $9 million from a moderator and six of the platform’s top vendors. While the above-mentioned examples of interventions effectively reduced the volume of the darknet drug trade, the policy recommendations presented above were designed to be implemented among potential customers. Since some users purchase on the darknet because they do not want to risk a personal meeting with dealers, darknet markets extend the range of potential users (Pergolizzi et al., 2017).
- As a result of their secretive and covert behaviour, users of market places and forums in the darknet do not only utilise anonymisation services.
- “The operators of the Darknet website are particularly suspected of commercially operating criminal trading platforms on the Internet and of committing crimes against the Narcotics Act,” Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) said in a press release.
- Activities on dark-web marketplaces are closely monitored by international law enforcement agencies.
- Launched after the takedown of AlphaBay in 2021, Abacus Market has rapidly risen to prominence.
- The biggest takedowns in terms of volume – Silk Road, AlphaBay and Wall Street – have been police-led, but in 2018, the EMCDDA published a study which found that, of the more than 100 markets, just 10 percent closed as a consequence of overt police action.
- In parallel, measures were taken in Germany and Sweden against one moderator and six of the marketplace’s highest vendors, and assets worth EUR 7.8 million seized.
Past operations against cybercrime markets suggest that even though Nemesis’s infrastructure was shut down, the criminals might retain the ability to restart their operations somewhere else. The shutdown of Nemesis and the prosecution of its operators “are a further blow to underground economy actors operating on the dark web and demonstrate the effectiveness of international law enforcement in the digital space,” the BKA said in a press release. The law enforcement action originated in a larger investigation into the internet hosting provider known as CyberBunker, a notorious service that scammers for a generation have used to operate with little fear of detection. In addition to the law enforcement actions taking down Hydra’s illegal marketplace, the U.S. sanctioned the company, along with a virtual currency exchange based in Estonia, the U.S. Darknet markets, also known as “cryptomarkets,” are online marketplaces that operate on the dark web, a part of the internet that is not indexed by search engines and is only accessible through specialized software like the Tor browser. The darknet is designed to provide its users with the highest possible degree of anonymity.
