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By 2021, it was the dark web’s king—80% of crypto trades tied to it, per some blockchain sleuths. But the feds struck again—German cops and the US teamed up in 2022, seized servers, and shut it down, nabbing $25 million in BTC. Hydra’s fall was seismic—vendors scrambled, users panicked—but it left a vacuum that markets like Bohemia jumped into.
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For example, an insider or factory employee might quietly slip away with an unmarked gun and sell it online. Once it lands on a darknet marketplace, it becomes part of the illegal weapons trade. The site allows users to find and buy a vast variety of products and services. It’s known for its strong security features (like a trusted escrow system, PGP two-factor authentication) and anonymity. Although these marketplaces are continuously shut down by law enforcement agencies, they still work today.
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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. Imagine an underground version of your favorite online marketplace, somewhere hidden, exclusive, and often operating outside legal boundaries. It is similar to an online store, except it’s not the type you’ll find with a quick Google search.
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Archetyp Market arrived online in 2020 and grew into a significant hub for online drug trafficking. Until this month, it had evaded the law enforcement operations that took down other major dark web marketplaces. Archetyp facilitated the sale of cocaine, MDMA, amphetamines, and highly potent synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.
But those of us who have studied this space for years weren’t surprised. But shutdowns like this have become a recurring feature of the dark web. The superseding indictment was announced June 14 by HSI New York Special Agent in Charge Ivan J. Arvelo, acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Morris Pasqual, FBI Chicago Special Agent in Charge Robert W. BKA has not mentioned if the server administrators or any of the platform’s core operators were identified or arrested during the action. At its peak, Nemesis counted over 150,000 user accounts and 1,100 seller accounts worldwide, with about 20% of them being based in Germany.
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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. Some countries have just one or a few vendors with a loyal customer base and a wider selection of goods.
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Vendors on Incognito paid a registration fee and a 5% commission on every sale. That revenue went to fund the site’s operations, including servers and what the DOJ described as “employee” salaries. All transactions were conducted in cryptocurrency—primarily Bitcoin and Monero—allowing customers and vendors to move funds without using traditional financial rails. Monero’s privacy features in particular obscured sender, receiver, and transaction amounts, posing challenges to investigators tracing flows.
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Further confounding efforts, these multiple markets are often scattered across different regions and jurisdictions, requiring significant international cooperation to drive operations. In 2025, agencies will need to deploy a combination of advanced cyber tools, including AI-driven pattern recognition, blockchain analysis, and network infiltration strategies, to track illicit activity across multiple channels. Established by Parsarad in 2021, Nemesis facilitated the trade of illegal drugs and services by narcotics traffickers and cybercriminals before its servers were seized in March 2024 by U.S., German, and Lithuanian authorities. According to OFAC, Nemesis had over 30,000 active users and 1,000 vendors, and between 2021 and 2024, facilitated the sale of nearly $30 million worth of fentanyl and other drugs around the world, including to the United States. Examples include the sale of high-quality products with low risk for contamination (including lacing and cutting), vendor-tested products, sharing of trip reports, and online discussion of harm reduction practices.
“Satisfied customer, will be back,” writes one user on the product page of a meth dealer with the handle shardyshardface. “Excellent,” reads a plaudit posted by a buyer of the opiate oxycodone. “Bravo,” says another for a $5 sample of fentanyl, one of 18 reviews posted on the product’s profile page in the last week. In all, Empire lists over 18,000 narcotic offerings, including hundreds for oxycodone alone. 47-year-old Rushan Lavar Reed and 28-year-old Celeste Nicole Reed were participating in a long-term trafficking conspiracy that illegally distributed ‘pharmacy grade, not homemade pressed pills,’ according to the U.S. PCMag.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering lab-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services.
After that, many other marketplaces kept trying to take its place and become the top dark web market. However, legal bodies and law enforcement operations made this impossible and shut down these illegal communities. Genesis Market and BidenCash, two top dark web marketplaces, were also shut down in 2023 and 2025, respectively. Ulbricht faced several serious charges, including distributing illegal drugs, running a criminal enterprise, hacking, trafficking fake IDs, and money laundering. In the end, he was sentenced to life in prison for running one of the largest and most scandalous dark web cases in history. Many people go to the dark web to buy things they can’t find elsewhere, but what if what you’re buying is also trying to harm you?
- Srinivasan received virtual currency as payment for the drugs and then routed that virtual currency through cryptocurrency exchanges.
- The data from this week’s seizures will be the basis for further investigations against sellers and users who used the platform, German authorities said.
- For a local machine configuration, he recommends a computer purchased for cash running Linux, using a local Tor transparent proxy.
- 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.
- Due to being the most popular and the oldest coin, Bitcoin is traceable.
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So when someone like a private buyer or criminal group can’t pass the background checks or get the right permits, they usually turn to the dark web to sidestep the rules and get armed without drawing attention. The dark web is a hidden section of the internet that you cannot reach with common search engines like Bing or Google. The only way in is through the use of special software that renders all users anonymous and untraceable.
And previous seizures like those of Hansa and Wall Street Market are likely still paying dividends for investigators. This also means that Operation Dark HunTor likely isn’t the final word on dark web arrests and that illicit marketplace vendors may have to proceed with a little more caution. The operation, codenamed SpecTor, was done in collaboration with nine countries, including the US, UK, Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Brazil, and Switzerland. While 155 of the arrests took place in the US, authorities seized $53.4 million in cash and digital currencies, 850kg (or 1,873 lbs) of drugs, and 117 firearms worldwide.
