These leads allow U.S. and international law enforcement agencies to identify darknet drug vendors and buyers, resulting in a series of coordinated, but separate, law enforcement investigations, resulting in the statistics announced today. Those arrested had sold drugs on a variety of darknet marketplaces, among them AlphaBay, Empire and DeepSea. So far, law enforcement have arrested 179 people and seized $6.5 million in crypto and cash, 500 kilograms of drugs and 63 firearms. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the largest international operation to date targeting darknet drug markets. A sprawling law enforcement crackdown, dubbed Operation RapTor, zeroed in on illicit fentanyl and opioid sales across online black markets, leading to the arrest of 270 individuals worldwide. These leads allow U.S. and international law enforcement agencies to identify darknet drug vendors and buyers, resulting in a series of coordinated, but separate, law enforcement investigations, reflected in the statistics announced today.
Dark Web Down — Hundreds Arrested As FBI Strikes
- "These darknet marketplaces have grown in popularity at an alarming rate and allow drug traffickers to openly advertise and take orders from anywhere in the world," Rosen said.
- In Ohio, members of a group known as PillCosby were charged with mailing out over a million pills laced with fentanyl.
- After Silk Road’s fall, AlphaBay rose in late 2014 as the largest dark web market ever.
- The seizures brought in lots of traffic to other markets making TradeRoute and Dream Market the most popular markets at the time.
- “Operation SpecTor was a coordinated international law enforcement effort, spanning three continents, to disrupt drug trafficking on the dark web and represents the most funds seized and the highest number of arrests in any coordinated international action led by the Justice Department against drug traffickers on the dark web,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.
When examining drug-purchasing habits from DNMs spanning 2020 to 2024, some patterns emerge, in particular about wholesale activity, that is, purchases likely made by organizations with the intent to redistribute. Throughout 2024, DNM vendors also sent far more value to personal wallets and stored funds on-chain. Last year, DNM vendors sent a significantly higher portion of their funds to DeFi than they did historically. Nemesis Market also saw its demise in March, when German authorities seized its infrastructure, along with $102,000 in cryptocurrency. Lin was charged with a host of crimes, and by May, federal authorities in New York had arrested him. Besides Hydra operators, other DNM administrators faced criminal prosecution in 2024.
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A series of law enforcement takedowns in the last few years have shaped the 2024 drug and fraud ecosystems. On Oct. 11, 2023, law enforcement executed arrest warrants at the couple’s Las Vegas home and arrested them both. Archetyp’s takedown might make headlines, but it won’t stop the trade of illicit drugs on the dark web. Beyond drugs, there are now ever-growing examples of generative AI being used for sexual deepfakes across schools and even of public figures, including the recent case of NRL presenter Tiffany Salmond. Dark web market users routinely face voluntary closures (the gradual retirement of a market), exit scams (sudden closures of markets where any money in escrow is taken), or even scheduled maintenance of these markets. Buyers use cryptocurrency and escrow systems (third-party payment systems which hold funds until the transaction is complete) to anonymously purchase illicit drugs.
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If you want to test your organization’s resilience or hunt down hidden vulnerabilities before criminals do, DeepStrike can help. In practice, no market in the past decade has survived indefinitely. Modern darknet investigations rely on a mix of technology and teamwork.
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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. A moderator and six prominent vendors were arrested simultaneously in other countries, and officers seized assets worth about $9 million. 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. From June 11 to 13, the agency said, a series of coordinated law enforcement actions targeting the platform’s administrator, moderators, key vendors and technical infrastructure took place across Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain and Sweden. The market had more than 600,000 users and contained more than 17,000 listings for illicit substances.
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Operation DisrupTor used information from another major darknet market raided in April 2019, FBI Director Christopher Wray said. The US Justice Department announced the largest dark web bust it has ever helped carry out, seizing more than 1,100 pounds of drugs from 179 alleged online dealers around the world. The international operation leads to arrests in the US, Germany, United Kingdom, Austria, the Netherlands and Sweden. In addition to fentanyl, the presence of nitazenes in the global supply of dangerous synthetic opioids has increased, and China-based vendors have established themselves as the initial source. While not all are pictured above, in total, we found 16 vendors either selling or sourcing drug material from Abacus and purchasing production supplies from this China-based vendor. The Reactor graph below shows this vendor’s connection with drug vendors on Abacus Market.
And we thank our law enforcement partners for working with us to achieve this; removing dangerous illicit substances from the mail and American communities saves lives.” “We are committed to taking all necessary actions to combat illicit drugs in the mail. “Collaboration with our law enforcement partners is key to combatting fentanyl and opioid trafficking,” said Chief Jim Lee of the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI). “The availability of dangerous substances like fentanyl on dark net marketplaces is helping to fuel the crisis that has claimed far too many American lives,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Dark Web Marketplaces: Major Takedowns And How Police Dismantle Them
Some criminal internet forums such as the defunct Tor Carding Forum and the Russian Anonymous Marketplace function as markets with trusted members providing escrow services, and users engaging in off-forum messaging. Items on a typical centralized darknet market are listed from a range of vendors in an eBay-like marketplace format. This suggests that law enforcement responses to cryptomarkets result in continued security innovations, thereby making markets more resilient to undercover law enforcement efforts. Uptime and comparison services provide sources of information about active markets as well as suspected scams and law enforcement activity. In July 2017, the markets experienced their largest disruptions since Operation Onymous, when Operation Bayonet culminated in coordinated multinational seizures of both the Hansa and leading AlphaBay markets, sparking worldwide law enforcement investigations.
In all, more than 317 pounds of fentanyl were seized, and given that 2 pounds could kill around 500,000 people according to the FBI, that’s no small potatoes. Although by its very nature, the dark web operates under the radar to some degree, that doesn’t mean it is out of reach of law enforcement, as Operation RapTor has just proven. But there’s more to the dark web than passwords and malware; there’s also a global trade in the most dangerous of recreational drugs. The Dutch national police’s Cyber Enabled Crime Team was involved in the operation, code-named SpecTor. Police in the Netherlands, where 10 suspects were arrested, said the operation was made up of “separate but complementary actions that took place in nine countries over the past 18 months.”
With the right partnerships, tools, and pressure at key chokepoints—such as when crypto is converted into fiat—law enforcement can still follow the money, identify key actors, and dismantle networks once thought untouchable. In an extraordinary twist, Lin had previously worked for Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he trained law enforcement officials on the very blockchain analytics techniques used to take down platforms like his own. That revenue went to fund the site’s operations, including servers and what the DOJ described as “employee” salaries. The platform also featured prescription drug listings falsely marketed as authentic, and some products were outright scams—counterfeit pills advertised as legitimate pharmaceuticals. Described by Attorney General Pam Bondi as a historic blow to the digital drug trade, the operation targeted individuals in the United States, Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
Operation RapTor: The Largest Darknet Takedown In History
In fact, it is routine for individual’s participating in these dark web communities, par for the course of engaging in the markets. What current policing strategies neglect is that dark web markets are not isolated to the storefronts that are the popular target of crackdowns. In some cases, established sellers on closed-down markets are welcomed onto new markets as digital “refugees” and have joining fees waived. Archetyp launched in May 2020 and quickly grew to become one of the most popular dark web markets with an estimated total transaction volume of €250 million (A$446 million).
It had been operating since 2012 and built up a following of over 100,000 users and more than 100 sellers, mainly from German-speaking countries. Individuals across the world can report suspicious criminal activity to the ICE Tip Line 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 866-DHS-2-ICE. 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. “HSI is on the front lines of a digital battlefield, deploying cutting-edge tech, relentless enforcement, and global coordination to hunt down these predators.
