The authorities in seven countries and Europol have jointly abolished Darkmarket, one of the largest darknet marketplaces. The measure was taken after the alleged operator of the market in Germany was arrested.
Authorities shut down Darkmarket
Europol announced on Tuesday that the Darknet marketplace Darkmarket had been shut down. The announcement details:
Darkmarket, the world’s largest illegal marketplace on the dark internet, was part of an international operation involving Germany, Australia, Denmark, Moldova, Ukraine, the United Kingdom (National Crime Agency) and the United States (DEA, FBI, and USA) , switched offline IRS).
According to Europol, Darkmarket had almost 500,000 users and more than 2,400 sellers. There have been over 320,000 transactions with “over 4,650 Bitcoin and 12,800 Monero transferred”.
“At the present time this corresponds to a sum of more than 140 million euros [$171 million]”Wrote Europol.” The vendors in the market mainly dealt in all kinds of drugs and sold counterfeit money, stolen or counterfeit credit card details, anonymous SIM cards and malware.
Alleged operator arrested
The alleged operator of Darkmarket was arrested at the weekend by the Central Criminal Police in the German city of Oldenburg near the German-Danish border.
Officials from the Cybercrime Department of the Koblenz Public Prosecutor’s Office found the marketplace and closed it. They shut down the market’s servers and confiscated “the criminal infrastructure – more than 20 servers in Moldova and Ukraine, supported by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA)”. Europol added:
The stored data gives the investigators new clues to investigate moderators, sellers and buyers further.
Europol recently closed another large darknet market. In cooperation with the Finnish customs (Tulli), the authorities closed the Darknet marketplace in Sipulimarket in December and confiscated the Bitcoin.
What do you think of the Darkmarket closure? Let us know in the comments below.
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