Law enforcement agencies from multiple countries have teamed up to take down what Europol is calling the “world’s largest” illegal marketplace on the dark web. DarkMarket had almost 500,000 users when it was taken offline. It had over 2,400 sellers and hosted 320,000 transactions wherein US$171 million worth of cryptocurrency had changed hands. According to Europol’s announcement, vendors mainly used the marketplace to sell drugs, counterfeit money and credit card details, malware and anonymous SIM cards.
In addition to Europol, law enforcement agencies from Germany, Australia, Denmark, Moldova, Ukraine, the United Kingdom (the National Crime Agency) and the USA (DEA, FBI, and IRS) participated in the operation. Over the weekend, German authorities arrested an Australian citizen who’s allegedly the operator behind the marketplace near the German-Danish border. A German cybercrime unit’s findings also made it possible to shut down DarkMarket and to seize its servers (more than 20 of them) in Moldova and Ukraine. Authorities are expecting the data stored in those servers to lead them to the marketplace’s moderators, sellers and buyers.
