“Russian (and Ukrainian) hackers, crypto, and online tech experts have always been ahead of the curve in this realm, and so it takes a huge effort from police to take down these kinds of shops and platforms” — says Daly. The platforms encourage the behavior by paying for advertisements on Telegram channels and even YouTube. The phenomenon has created a subculture of bloggers, YouTubers, and Telegram influencers who have turned dealing drugs into a lifestyle — creating content about their jobs online. Domestically manufactured synthetics are cheaper than trafficked cocaine or heroin and are spiking in popularity in Russia. Suppliers are meeting demand by producing Udemy-like online courses that teach the surprisingly accessible manufacture of synthetic drugs. For a growing number of struggling young people in Russia, the money outweighs the risks, especially if they have a drug habit.
Silk Road 20
TRM research found that vendors using dead drops in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Greece prefer Telegram, Session, and other end-to-end encrypted messenger services to DNMs. One Greece-based vendor tracked by TRM uses Telegram bots to arrange dead drops across Thessaloniki, relying on online geocoding services to provide customers with unique reference points for dead drops and posting the successful pickup in their channel. But even experienced drug vendors make mistakes that can be spotted and exploited by law enforcement armed with the right tools.
Among the eight most popular marketplaces surveyed, there are plenty of illicit goods and services to buy, the vast majority (57 percent) of the listings were found to offer drugs. Over a third featured cannabis derivatives (37 per cent), stimulants (29 percent), and members of the ecstasy family (19 percent). The report further underscores the severe social impacts of this model on Russian society, particularly among young people.
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When Archetyp went fully offline in June 2025, it triggered the same recovery reflexes seen after past collapses. Within hours, vendors were resurfacing on forums, scrambling to reconnect with buyers, showing proof of their identities and reassuring business continued as usual. In parallel, many began migrating to alternative markets, initially Abacus and TorZon Market, which became early landing zones.
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Parsarad was also indicted by a federal grand jury in the Northern District of Ohio on drug trafficking charges related to the illegal business he ran on the dark web. Following the DarkMarket takedown in January 2021, U.S. and international law enforcement agencies identified Darknet drug vendors and buyers, resulting in a series of complementary, but separate, law enforcement investigations. Prior to, but in support of Operation Dark HunTor, Italian authorities also shut down the DeepSea and Berlusconi dark web marketplaces which boasted over 40,000 advertisements of illegal products.
GOVT MAIL, CRIMINAL SALES
They dubbed themselves online as the “rickandmortyshop” and shipped stuffed animals across the country, but federal investigators allege the suspects behind the darknet business were shipping toys filled with methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin. Judge Göbel remarked on the grounds for the sentence as well as on the digitization of the drug trade, which has become an alternative to the traditional trade by means of darknet black markets and anonymous payment methods. The seized drugs included 141 pounds of fentanyl or fentanyl-laced narcotics, more than 569 pounds of amphetamines, 95 pounds of cocaine, 95 pounds of MDMA and 22 pounds of LSD and ecstasy pills, authorities said. The number of arrests and amount of money seized were the most for any international Justice Department-led drug trafficking operation, he said. Since the demise of Wall Street and Dream, two new markets, Empire and Nightmare – which both opened over a year ago – have grown rapidly as users have migrated over from closed sites. In the summer of 2017, Dream market, the second-biggest at that time, had just 48,000 deals.
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In contrast to the ROK — where dealers appear to be largely Korean nationals — the dead drop networks in South East Asia are dominated by the Russian-speaking diaspora, which has grown since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022. Darknet forums like RuTor have even hosted dedicated discussion areas for Russian-speaking expats living in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, and Dubai. The vast majority of drug stores identified by TRM Labs appear to be run by Russian-speaking vendors mostly targeting tourists. All darknet markets use escrow this basically means the buyer’s payment is held in escrow until the buyer confirms they’ve received the product which gives a piece of mind to the buyer. They also use 2FA, PGP, Private Mirros and Multi Signature to name some of the security features.
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- Europol, which is based in The Hague, built its intelligence on evidence from Germany, which seized the marketplace’s “criminal infrastructure” in December 2021, the agency said.
- Beyond Russia, the report warns that this drug trade model is now expanding across borders, posing public health and security risks.
- “The defendant’s alleged scheme combined one of the gravest current threats to public health – highly addictive and potentially lethal opioids – with a very modern criminal tool – the darknet,” said Acting US attorney Joon Kim.
- This allowed buyers to verify that they were transacting with the same vendor as before.
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Youth are drawn into this high-tech drug economy, often working as couriers or “kladmen” for online shops—a job that comes with high risks, including violence, criminal charges, and addiction. Violence has become endemic in the system, with enforcers, known as “sportsmen,” meting out harsh punishments for couriers suspected of theft or negligence. This pervasive violence, combined with the easy availability of highly addictive synthetic drugs, is fueling a public health crisis and contributing to rising incarceration rates among young Russians. Before escrow systems became commonplace, Marie once fell prey to a so-called “exit scam.” That’s when a dealer who plans to stop selling on a marketplace continues to take orders that they never plan to fulfill. “Except for those three times, I never got shorted, and the product ranged from good to excellent quality,” she noted. After one too many experiences with this joke of a drug, I decided to look for a new source.
- Most vendors (890) were based in the US, with the UK in second place, followed by Germany with 225 sellers.
- On a mundane note, ordering online isn’t as immediate as purchasing in-person.
- “Moriarty”, the masked figurehead of the largest darknet market, Mega, regularly taunts the Russian authorities, who have failed to arrest the masterminds, while updating his 2.8 million followers with red pill-style videos on masculinity and how to get rich on the drug trade.
- “Drug trafficking on the internet has now established itself as a permanent distribution channel for drugs in Germany,” says the drug situation report published last September by the federal police.
- This equated to a threefold increase of the percentage of people who reported the same in 2014, when the survey first started measuring the trend.
Operation RapTor was a global, coordinated effort by law enforcement in the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia to disrupt fentanyl and opioid trafficking, as well as the sales of other illicit goods and services, on the darknet, or dark web. JCODE and Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) continue to compile intelligence packages to identify entities of interest. 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. In furtherance of Operation RapTor and in its first action as a JCODE member agency, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) additionally sanctioned Iranian national Behrouz Parsarad for his role as the founder and operator of Nemesis Market following seizure of the market.
Drugs And The Darknet
“This computer stuff may make a lot of things easier, but it online sale is just as bad as dealing on the street,” Göbel explained. The Dutch national police’s Cyber Enabled Crime Team was involved in the operation, code-named SpecTor. Gibbons rejects the idea that shutdowns are a pointless and expensive waste of police time. “Although new DNMs have emerged, our work impacts on the trustworthiness of those running the sites. The replacement sites often take a considerable time to build up to the same vendor-customer base,” he said.
It should help law enforcement agencies and policy makers allocate resources accordingly. Dittus and company say the data suggests that darknet traders sit at the “last mile” end of the supply chain, at least as far as cannabis and cocaine are concerned. “We present strong evidence that cannabis and cocaine vendors are primarily located in a small number of consumer countries, rather than producer countries,” they say. “The system is being used in places where the Russian diaspora are living, for example in Bali. People are selling via dead drops in France, Greece, and the UK, where one site is teaching people how to become kladmen and drug cooks” — says Daly. “So it’s a very young version of the Russian system, but people are taking parts of it.”
Fill out the form to speak with our team about investigative professional services. For example, in Russia, freelance thugs known as “sportsmen” track down and brutalize delivery workers, or “kladmen,” who are accused of stealing. In one such channel, there are over 800 videos showing people being beaten, raped, dismembered, set on fire, and even crucified as retribution for their actions. Okparaeke is said to have bought from suppliers overseas in large quantities and shipped them on to customers in the US via post offices in New York and New Jersey. The pardon came on the same day the president threatened China with a 10 percent tariff on imports of Chinese-made goods for what he blamed “on the fact that they’re sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada.” Trump warned the tariff could come into effect as soon as 1 February.
Volatility has by now become a routine process used by vendors, users and administrators alike after the fall of each dark web market. What may look like disruption from the outside is, in practice, a recovery playbook now hardwired into the design of online drug markets. Archetyp may be gone, but the features that drove its success are already being carried forward by others. Archetyp was more than just the next online drug market to fall, having absorbed much of the vendor traffic displaced by earlier market closures.
