Such signatures are intended to confirm that vendors still have access to their accounts and have not been arrested or compromised. While the method has its limitations, HugBunter argued that failure to provide a cryptographic signature alongside continued account activity could be telling. On the Reddit-style dark web forum known as “Dread,” users are trying to determine which vendors were compromised by the operation, Straight Arrow News found. The dark web is a collection of sites that are not indexed by search engines and can only be viewed with specialized web browsers designed to provide privacy and anonymity.
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The below graph shows an increase in Abacus sales (in BTC) following the closure of ASAP Market in July 2023, and a further increase following some CEXs delisting XMR. Historically, DNMs have been known for the illicit drug trade, but in recent years have differentiated themselves with unique service offerings. Since last year’s Crypto Crime Report, the top performing Russia-based DNMs have held steady, but Kraken DNM overtook Mega as the leading DNM by annual revenue in 2024. Investigators said the seizure of Archetyp Market followed years of forensic work to trace financial flows, analyze digital evidence and map the platform’s architecture. A seizure notice now appears on the marketplace’s homepage, along with a Cyberpunk-style warning video dramatizing the police operation. 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.
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The EDTF encompasses a standalone Cyber Division and is on a mission to disrupt, dismantle or render ineffective organizations involved in the laundering of proceeds of narcotics trafficking and other financial crimes. Last week, two men, both in custody, were charged in federal court in Chicago with operating “Empire Market,” a dark web marketplace that enabled users to buy and sell more than $430 million in illegal goods and services around the world. On March 20, 2024, U.S., German, and Lithuanian law enforcement agencies seized Nemesis’ servers in a joint operation.
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Approximately 300 officers were deployed to secure digital evidence, seize assets, and arrest key suspects. The takedown was led by German authorities, with Europol and Eurojust facilitating intelligence sharing, operational coordination, and legal cooperation across borders. Archetyp Market, which boasted more than 600,000 users, operated for more than five years and contained more than 17,000 listings for illicit substances, including cocaine, MDMA and amphetamines.
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. The video offered suggestions that multiple arrests were made at all levels of the Archetyp hierarchy, and although Europol’s official announcement only confirmed one was made – the 30-year-old German – the BKA said seven people were arrested in Sweden. The suspected admin of the operations owns property in Hanover and Bucharest too, all of which were searched by domestic law enforcement.
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Before these dark web marketplaces were shutdown, they sold a range of illegal products, from drugs to firearms. A series of law enforcement takedowns in the last few years have shaped the 2024 drug and fraud ecosystems. While 2024 was likely a record year for crypto crime revenue overall, darknet market (DNM) and fraud shop inflows fell, with DNMs receiving just over $2 billion in BTC on-chain, and fraud shops $225 million. The operation allowed law enforcement to secretly track drug sales and payments made on the marketplace, as well as analyze communications between the market’s operator and vendors.
Archetyp Market
Srinivasan received virtual currency as payment for the drugs and then routed that virtual currency through cryptocurrency exchanges. ‘This operation led by the German authorities marks the end of a criminal service that enabled the anonymous trade in high volumes of illicit drugs, including cocaine, MDMA, amphetamines, and synthetic opioids’, the statement said. Last week, one of the dark web’s most prominent drug marketplaces – Archetyp – was shut down in an international, multi-agency law enforcement operation following years of investigations. It was touted as a major policing win and was accompanied by a slick cyberpunk-themed video.
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They may also raise privacy and surveillance concerns, warning that aggressive cyber policies risk collateral impacts on online freedom and legitimate users of anonymity technologies. Over its five years of activity, the marketplace amassed over 612,000 users with a total transaction volume of over €250 million (approximately $289 million) in Monero cryptocurrency transactions. Dubbed Operation RapTor, authorities say the coordinated strike dismantled darknet drug networks fueling the fentanyl epidemic, marking the largest seizure to date under an initiative known as J-CODE. A global law enforcement operation has resulted in the seizure of $200 million in cash and digital assets and the arrest of 270 individuals across 10 countries, the U.S. They hailed Operation RapTor as a major leap forward in tackling sophisticated criminal outfits that try to hide their fentanyl and opioid sales under the veil of dark web anonymity. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement (JCODE) team spearheaded this international initiative, teaming up closely with Europol and numerous law enforcement agencies throughout Europe, Asia, and South America.
PCMag.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering lab-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services. Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology. On Monday, Europol announced it had dismantled Archetyp Market, which had been around since 2020, making it one of the “most enduring” dark web drug providers, the agency said. In the US, the arrests fell under the DOJ’s Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement team, which includes investigators from FBI and the United States Postal Service. J-CODE’s most recent operation, called Sabotor, resulted in 61 arrests announced in March 2019. “These people don’t just operate on one market, they cover the full spectrum of the dark web,” says Europol’s Georges.
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Archetyp Market, a site on the dark web that sold illegal drugs, has been shut down after police in Europe arrested its administrator. “It provided us with all the information which led to the identification of those arrested today,” says Europol press officer Claire Georges. “We collated the information and then we sent out what we call intelligence packages to all the concerned countries. Basically it’s information or documents where we say, look, we know this person in your country has done this, you may want to open an investigation.” Georges says also that there are more arrests to come. It’s unclear how big a dent Operation Disruptor will make in the long run; the dark web drug market tends to bounce back, even after the high-profile collapses of marketplaces like the Silk Road and AlphaBay.
- China-based precursor manufacturers mark the beginning of the synthetic drug supply chain.
- Law enforcement confiscated criminal servers and seized data that could help to identify users of the platform, the BKA said.
- For example, after law enforcement took down the website of the notorious ransomware gang LockBit, the group attempted to relaunch its cyber extortion operation.
- Ghost guns, assembled with prefabricated parts and without required serial numbers, are nearly always designed to be semi-automatic firearms, and are almost impossible to trace.
A screenshot of the marketplace shared by the DOJ in the statement showed cocaine available for bulk purchase from JoyInc on Drughub, a dark web site. 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. BKA has not mentioned if the server administrators or any of the platform’s core operators were identified or arrested during the action.
Earlier in May, Europol announced the arrest of 288 individuals connected to drug trafficking on Monopoly Market. The arrests were made two years after German authorities secretly seized control of the market’s infrastructure. Desnica allegedly used at least two cryptocurrency exchange services to launder his illicit proceeds. He then sold the cryptocurrency to Serbia-based peer-to-peer traders in exchange for fiat currency — all in an effort to “clean” his earnings, prosecutors said.
This massive undertaking stretched across four continents, with investigators working together in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, and South Korea. Officials announced they recovered over two metric tons of drugs, a haul that included a hefty 144 kilograms of fentanyl or fentanyl-laced substances, alongside some 180 firearms. It seized 50.8 million euros ($53.4 million) in cash and virtual currencies, 850 kilograms of drugs, and 117 firearms were seized in a series of raids in several countries. The largest number of arrests — 153 — were made in the United States, followed by the United Kingdom with 55 and Germany with 52, according to the European Union law enforcement agency Europol, which coordinated the worldwide operation. On Oct. 11, 2023, law enforcement executed arrest warrants at the couple’s Las Vegas home and arrested them both.
