On Dec. 16, 2024, Rui-Siang Lin pleaded guilty to charges brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York of narcotics conspiracy, money laundering, and conspiracy to sell adulterated and misbranded medication for owning and operating Incognito Market, one of the largest narcotics marketplaces on the internet. 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.
Fraud And Hacking Services
The indictment states that they began operating Empire Market on Feb. 1, 2018. According to Europol, the resulting takedown took place between June 11 and 13, with the goal of “targeting the platform’s administrator, moderators, key vendors, and technical infrastructure” across the European continent. “Around 300 officers were deployed to carry out enforcement actions and secure critical evidence,” the agency added. With these stolen credentials, the suspects purchased ghost gun parts and tools from a variety of legitimate websites, which they used to build ghost guns with a 3D printer, and sell for cash. A Manhattan district attorney successfully used this evidence to bring charges against one of the suspects. Deposits span from the hundreds to the tens of thousands of dollars, and the average deposit amount in 2024 was over $2,000.
Major Arrests And Stiff Sentences Follow Coordinated Busts
Lin’s undoing came in May 2024, when he was arrested while transiting through New York’s JFK Airport. He later pleaded guilty to narcotics conspiracy, money laundering, and conspiracy to sell adulterated and misbranded medications in the Southern District of New York. What current policing strategies neglect is that dark web markets are not isolated to the storefronts that are the popular target of crackdowns. These are communities stretched across dark and surface web forums which develop shared tutorials and help one another adapt to any new changes. These closures bind users together and foster a shared resilience and collective experience in navigating these environments.
China-based Vendors And Novel Synthetic Opioids
“The name derives from the vendor’s early involvement in ketamine smuggling. Drugs were primarily sourced from a United Kingdom-based vendor Gunga Din, a known re-shipper of the globally infamous Dr. Seuss (a.k.a. DS or Tribe Seuss), believed to be the largest LSD source in the world,” it said. Word of successful prosecutions tied to Operation RapTor is already coming in from multiple U.S. federal districts.
McDonald recruited and hired accomplices to help package and ship the narcotics they sold on the darknet. McDonald directed and helped these accomplices package and ship the narcotics. McDonald purchased bulk quantities of fentanyl and cocaine and then directed others to complete hundreds of drug sales involving large quantities of both fentanyl and cocaine. “Operation RapTor shows that the dark web is not beyond the reach of law enforcement,” said Head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, Edvardas Šileris.
ICE Is Hiring 10,000 Agents Some Unexpected People Want To Join The Trump Crackdown
Agents also allegedly found large quantities of cash and suspected drugs while serving several search warrants, but the Justice Department declined to provide further details about those activities and seizures, saying the information was under seal. Four Los Angeles County men were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of operating one of the dark web’s biggest drug distribution networks, according to the U.S. Conversely, some fraud shops saw an increase in activity and higher revenues on-chain. The chart below shows fraud shops that performed well after the UAPS takedown, indicating that the customer migration was swift, and favored longstanding, trusted fraud shops like Vclub and Bankomat.
Parsarad’s On-chain Activity Reveals DNM Connectivity, Security Awareness
People visit this market to buy stolen credit cards, personal data, remote desktop account credentials, and logs gathered from information-stealing malware. Established in 2020, Awazon Market has quickly become one of the most famous darknet marketplaces. You can find a lot of goods and services packed with stealth high-level encryption, no JavaScript, and anti-DDoS protection.
Arrested In Global Crackdown On Dark Web Drug Market
By offering heightened anonymity and stronger defenses against law enforcement, these markets attract criminals who feel they provide a safe environment. Operation RapTor involves law enforcement actions taken by JCODE member agencies, including the DEA, FBI, FDA OCI, HSI, IRS-CI, and USPIS. State, local, and other federal agencies also contributed to Operation RapTor investigations through task force participation and regional partnerships, as well as the multi-agency Special Operations Division. According to court documents and statements made in court, Srinivasan and Ta used the “redlightlabs” darknet account to advertise and sell counterfeit M30 oxycodone pills containing fentanyl and other illicit drugs. Srinivasan also used the encrypted messaging application Wickr to communicate with and sell drugs to customers. Srinivasan received virtual currency as payment for the drugs and then routed that virtual currency through cryptocurrency exchanges.
Top Darknet Markets 2025
Today, the United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Iran-based Behrouz Parsarad, the administrator of Nemesis online darknet marketplace (DNM), including 44 bitcoin (BTC) addresses and 5 Monero addresses. OFAC designated Parsarad for facilitating the sale of fentanyl and other drugs around the world, including the United States. The investigators identified the suspects (many behind thousands of sales on illicit online marketplaces) using intelligence collected following takedowns of multiple dark web markets, including Nemesis, Bohemia, Tor2Door, and Kingdom Market. Archetyp Market sellers provided the market’s customers with access to high volumes of drugs, including cocaine, amphetamines, heroin, cannabis, MDMA, and synthetic opioids like fentanyl through more than 3,200 registered vendors and over 17,000 listings.
Whether you want some pharmaceutical products (drugs) or digital items, you will probably find the products here, and that too at affordable prices. Vice City listens to the problems faced by its customers and vendors and solves them so that they can keep using the platform with ease. To access the marketplace, dark web users must register first and pass the CAPTCHA test to prove they are human. While this market started in Canada in 2021, WeTheNorth now sells to both Canadian and international users. It’s a market for fake documents, hacking software, and financial fraud services. WeTheNorth has a strong community vibe, with an active forum where users interact and share updates.
- The far-reaching success of Operation RapTor hinged on extensive cooperation between numerous agencies and international partners.
- Jardine emphasized that illicit cryptocurrency transactions represent only a minor share of total crypto activity.
- By 2021, it was the dark web’s king—80% of crypto trades tied to it, per some blockchain sleuths.
- BidenCash is another latest marketplace that started in 2022, and is now home to sensitive financial data transactions.
- Vendors on Incognito paid a registration fee and a 5% commission on every sale.
The Reactor graph below shows five purchases made to fraud shops, four of which passed through intermediary addresses. While China-based vendors are frequently referenced as the source of precursors for dangerous synthetic drugs, their involvement in machinery sales is also an important aspect of the drug supply chain. One China-based pill press manufacturer which advertises on clearnet business-to-business (B2B) websites has on-chain ties to drug vendors on Abacus Market. Along with its listings for large pill press machines, the vendor does not hide the sale of Oxycontin and Xanax TDP die kits, which are used to press counterfeit pills.
Money Laundering
Down in California, two men were handed stiff prison sentences of 17 and 15 years for peddling fentanyl-laced pills to over 1,000 people through darknet sites. In the US, the arrests fell under the DOJ’s Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement team, which includes investigators from FBI and the United States Postal Service. J-CODE’s most recent operation, called Sabotor, resulted in 61 arrests announced in March 2019. Such signatures are intended to confirm that vendors still have access to their accounts and have not been arrested or compromised.
