Researchers tracking these groups noted that Telegram’s broadcast and bot features allowed operators to recreate the functionality of darknet forums almost overnight. Law enforcement in Russia and Germany confirmed that Hydra affiliates were using Telegram bots to automate sales, effectively replicating market infrastructure in a mobile app. JCODE is an FBI-led Department of Justice initiative, which supports, coordinates, and assists in de-confliction of investigations targeting for disruption and dismantlement of the online sale of illegal drugs, especially fentanyl and other opioids.
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At the centre of this process was Dread, a forum that became the first destination for disoriented Archetyp users. Within 48 hours of Archetyp being busted, scam relaunches such as ‘Archetyp V2’ appeared, while refund scammers mimicked well-known vendors to exploit the chaos. The influx of previous Archetyp users overwhelmed fragile markets such as Abacus, causing outages and distrust in the platform. The value of these markets was estimated by the UNODC in September of 2018 to stand at $14 million (£11 million) to $25 million (£20 million) per month – a tiny fraction of overall illicit drug sales.
Dark Web Drug Trafficking
“Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, more people have turned to the darknet than ever before to buy drugs,” Monaco said. The Justice Department said its investigation was ongoing and investigators were still working to identify other individuals behind darknet accounts. A wild detail spotted in an online real estate listing by internet sleuths has sparked a major police operation — only for the mystery to deepen. After raiding the premises, police realised the scale of the operation seizing 320kg of various drugs, $A70,000 in cash, $A50,000 in bitcoin, a dozen phones and two dozen SIM cards. While darknet demand may not disappear, making supply lines more fragmented and risky raises costs and slows distribution — both of which reduce harm. The Dutch national police’s Cyber Enabled Crime Team was involved in the operation, code-named SpecTor.
- Escrow services in the traditional sense are available for each and every transaction.
- Analysts noted that Telegram enabled a shift toward decentralised “broker networks,” where smaller groups coordinated sales of Genesis-style data.
- A spokeswoman from Leipzig police said it was almost a year of investigation that lead to the arrest of the drug dealer.
- Shiny Flakes offered basically everything, from MDMA and ecstasy to speed and crystal meth to LSD and marijuana, which he stopped selling occasionally because of high demand.
- In 2011 he started the Darknet marketplace “Silk Road” under the alias “Dread Pirate Robert,” and in the two years until it was shut down, deals worth around $1.2 billion were concluded via Silk Road.
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PGP support and two-factor authentication are both available on the market as an additional layer of security. Even though relatively small in comparison to the overall retail market for drugs, the sale of pharmaceuticals in these markets is significant and appears to be growing. 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. Three more people were arrested in connection with Crimemarket elsewhere in the country, as police go after users of the site as well as its administrators. German police claim to have disrupted the country’s most popular underground market for drugs and cybercrime.
International Law Enforcement Cooperation
The website operators are suspected of drug trafficking and running a criminal trading platform. This operation was aided by non-operational supporting participation from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and U.S. Local, state, and other federal agencies also contributed to Operation Dark HunTor investigations through task force participation and regional partnerships. Darknet vendor accounts were also identified and attributed to real individuals selling illicit goods on active marketplaces, as well as inactive Darknet marketplaces such as Dream, WallStreet, White House, DeepSea, and Dark Market. From at least April 2021 until May 2023, McDonald and others conspired to sell fentanyl and cocaine via multiple darknet marketplaces. The success of this mission draws heavily on data harvested from the takedowns of prior darknet markets.
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The largest number of arrests were made in the U.S., which is in the grips of an overdose crisis. Synthetic opioids, mostly fentanyl, kill more Americans every year than died in the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. Payments on the platform were made exclusively with Monero, a privacy-enhanced cryptocurrency the architecture of which makes tracing blockchain transactions much more of a pain for authorities. The marketplace had more than 600,000 users with a total transaction volume of at least €250 million ($289 million).
- The website was a bastion of cyber-crime, surviving for more than six years selling drugs and illegal goods.
- Nevertheless, after Dream closed, the launch in July by an ex-Dream admin of a successor called Samsara has not yet gained huge traction; perhaps as users are suspicious that it could be a police-operated honeytrap – a strategy deployed by investigators at the time of the Alphabay takedown.
- Unlike previous isolated arrests, this operation unfolded with a high degree of synchronization — not just across borders, but also between tactical, cyber, and legal departments.
- The findings of a German cybercrime unit allowed for the closure of DarkMarket as well as the seizure of its servers (more than 20 of them), which were located in Moldova and Ukraine.
- From December 2013 up until his arrest on February 26th, 2015 he received 4.4 million euros (about $4.8 million) worth of Bitcoin (3.9 million euros after loss in value, or about $4.2 million) in revenue.
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The police are still unable to access two of his Bitcoin wallets and are therefore unable to see the balances. In his childhood bedroom, with neatly stacked drugs organized on shelves around the room. The arrest followed a pickup from a 51-year-old courier that Maximilian met in a parking lot near his apartment in Leipzig. After Maximilian S.’s surprising confession at the end of September, the presiding judge, Norbert Göbel, found him guilty of constructing and running the Shiny Flakes online shop.
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. But it is hackers demanding ransom money, not police, that’s the main worry for those operating DNMs, says Patrick Shortis. “The biggest source of disruption to markets is currently coming from the ongoing distributed denial of service DDOS attacks that have knocked markets and forums offline intermittently over the last few months,” he says. Gibbons rejects the idea that shutdowns are a pointless and expensive waste of police time.
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In Europe, Germany is among the top three biggest markets for drugs, next to the UK and the Netherlands, and they have a lot of darknet markets operating in the country. People from all walks of life partake in recreational drugs, whether it be to relax or because they want to chase a high. With laws cracking down harder and harder on the selling and distribution of these substances, people are turning more and more to the darknet to get their fix. In total, law enforcement officers seized 47 smartphones, 45 computers, narcotics, and assets worth €7.8 million from all suspects during Operation Deep Sentinel. In the weeks leading up to its takedown, Archetyp had already started to show signs of trouble. Users encountered ‘maintenance’ messages and several alternative access links failed to load.
Technical Infrastructure And Financial Flows
Authorities arrested the alleged administrator, a 30-year-old German national, in Barcelona, while enforcement actions in Germany and Sweden targeted one of the site’s moderators and six of its highest-volume vendors. The digital underworld has witnessed a major blow with the recent dismantling of Archetyp Market, one of the longest-operating darknet drug markets. Since its launch in May 2020, Archetyp grew into a sprawling platform facilitating massive illegal drug sales across multiple countries. This article explores the operation that brought it down, the scope of its criminal activities, and the broader implications for global law enforcement and darknet markets. Operation RapTor resulted in the highest number of seizures of any JCODE operation, including more than $200 million in currency and digital assets, over two metric tons of drugs, 144 kilograms of fentanyl or fentanyl-laced narcotics, and over 180 firearms. In a landmark international operation, law enforcement agencies dismantled Archetyp Market, one of the longest-running and largest darknet drug trafficking platforms, arresting its 30-year-old German administrator in Barcelona.
Since the demise of Wall Street and Dream, two new markets, Empire and Nightmare – which both opened over a year ago – have grown rapidly as users have migrated over from closed sites. In the summer of 2017, Dream market, the second-biggest at that time, had just 48,000 deals. Authorities also said that any obstacles the coronavirus pandemic might have initially posed to drug trafficking had been quickly overcome, saying dealers and users had turned to the darknet when street dealing was affected by social distancing measures and lockdowns.
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. One Archetyp Market moderator and six of the marketplace’s highest vendors were also arrested in Germany and Sweden. A Chainalysis report out last week claimed that such marketplaces saw profits rebound slightly last year from 2022, after generating roughly $1.7bn in cryptocurrency-based revenues. In addition, financial institutions and other persons that engage in certain transactions or activities with the sanctioned individual may expose themselves to sanctions or be subject to an enforcement action. The prohibitions include the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any designated person, or the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.
