DarkMarket, the world’s largest illegal marketplace on Dark Web, was taken offline by German police and arrested its suspected operator.
DarkMarket, the world’s largest illegal marketplace on Dark Web, was taken offline by German police and arrested its suspected operator.
The marketplace offers for sale all kinds of drugs, counterfeit money, stolen and fake credit card data, anonymous SIM cards, malware and much more.
According to the prosecutors in the south-western city of Koblenz, the DarkMarket was shut down on Monday.
A 34-year-old Australian national who was alleged to have operated DarkMarket was arrested near the German-Danish border during the German operation. More than 20 servers used by the suspect in Moldova and Ukraine were seized.
Police in the northern city of Oldenburg “were able to arrest the alleged operator of the suspected world’s largest illegal marketplace on the market, the DarkMarket, at the weekend, ” prosecutors said in a statement.
The figures related to the Dark Market at the time of the shutdown are impressive:
- almost 500,000 users;
- more than 2,400 vendors;
- over 320,000 transactions;
- more than 4,650 Bitcoin and 12800 Monero transferred.
At the current exchange rate, overall transactions correspond to a turnover valued at 140 million euros ($170 million).
“Investigators expect to use the data saved there to launch new probes against the moderators, sellers and buyers of the marketplace,” said prosecutors.
German investigators were assisted in their months-long probe by authorities worldwide, including the US Drug Enforcement Administration and police from Australia, Britain, Denmark, Switzerland, Ukraine and Moldova with support of Europol.
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