The platform was active on the darknet, a part of the internet accessible only through specialized tools that provide more anonymity. It was founded in 2021 and had more than 150,000 user accounts and over 1,100 seller accounts worldwide, nearly 20% of the latter in Germany, according to German authorities. Archetyp Market was one of the few marketplaces allowing the sale of highly potent synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, contributing to broader health threats and overdose risks in Europe and beyond. Listings included offerings of prescription medication that was falsely advertised as being authentic. For example, in November 2023, while operating in an undercover capacity on Incognito Market, a law enforcement agent purchased and received several tablets purported to be oxycodone.
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During this time they were able to gather information on customers and the functioning of the darknet. Right after the pair were arrested last month, authorites secretly took control of the site and turned it into a honeypot trap. US agencies like the FBI, DEA narcotics law enforcement division and IRS tax authority all contributed to the investigation, along with police from Australia, Britain, Denmark, Switzerland, Ukraine and Moldova, with Europol playing a “coordinating role.” The evolution from IRC to Telegram represents more than just a shift in tools, it signals a transformation in how cybercrime infiltrates daily digital life.
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“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. “Through close cooperation and intelligence sharing, officers across three continents identified and arrested suspects, sending a clear message to those who think they can hide in the shadows. Europol will continue working with our partners to make the internet safer for everyone.”
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Both of these factors caught the attention of local authorities who began surveillance on the young drug dealer. Despite all of these precautions, the drug lord made two vital errors that ultimately led to his arrest. Although the defendant appeared nonchalant, even smiling at times during his sentencing, Judge Göbel agreed the confession was worthy of a lighter sentence and ordered Maximillian S to spend seven years behind bars.
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But the Darknet perpetrators are difficult to prosecute — especially since drug-dealing is often “victimless crime” that neither party has an interest in reporting. The Federal Criminal Police Office in Germany (BKA) and the Frankfurt cybercrime combating unit (ZIT) conducted the action on Wednesday, March 20, 2024, with law enforcement taking down the website and confiscating approximately $100,000 in cash. Frankfurt prosecutors accuse the men of abetting illicit drug sales, weapons trafficking and plagiarism of copyrighted goods. Authorities took down Hansa Market on Thursday, in a dramatic surprise that sent shockwaves across illicit online markets dealing in everything from drugs and weapons to forged documents.
A few weeks before, Dream – the longest running and largest market – was closed under mysterious circumstances. Europol said Archetyp had been one of the few darknet markets that allowed the sale of fentanyl and other highly potent synthetic opioids. The German police have seized infrastructure for the darknet Nemesis Market cybercrime marketplace in Germany and Lithuania, disrupting the site’s operation. A fourth defendant linked to Wall Street Market was charged yesterday in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. Marcos Paulo De Oliveira-Annibale, 29, of Sao Paulo, Brazil, also faces federal drug distribution and money laundering charges for allegedly acting as a moderator who, among other things, mediated disputes between vendors and their customers. Annibale, who used the online monikers “MED3LIN,” also acted as a public relations representative for WSM by, among others things, promoting WSM on websites such as Reddit, according to the complaint.
The website launched in 2015 selling drugs, hacked materials, forged documents and illegal digital services such as Bitcoin-mixing – which cyber-criminals use to launder stolen or extorted digital coins. This operation marks a critical blow to Europe’s darknet drug trade, yet underscores the evolving challenges of cyber-enabled crime. Europol said German authorities seized Monopoly Market’s infrastructure more than two years ago, allowing the agency to create intelligence packages that were shared with international partners across Europe as well as in the United States and Brazil. Between 11 and 13 June, a series of coordinated actions took place across Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Sweden, targeting the platform’s administrator, moderators, key vendors, and technical infrastructure. Around 300 officers were deployed to carry out enforcement actions and secure critical evidence.
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On the homepage of Cannazon, it is made abundantly clear that the company’s objective is to differentiate the sale of its drugs from the sale of other harmful and illegal substances. It provides a list of items that are categorically not allowed to be sold through its marketplace. The German police’s largest bust came in April 2022, when its investigators disrupted the world’s largest darknet market, Hydra, which had 17,000,000 members and 19,000 registered sellers.
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DF claims they are safe from investigation as the site’s business model differs from that of DeepDotWeb, which took affiliate sales fees in return for keeping lists of URLs updated. Although the sale of party drugs like ecstasy (MDMA) and cocaine went down as a result of the pandemic, the EMCDDA says users have turned to lesser known psychoactive drugs instead. Authorities at EMCDDA say, “The events of 2020 are likely to have a longterm impact on the future challenges arising in the area of drugs.” Those big announcements came on the same day the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) released its annual European Drug Report.
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German authorities were instrumental in taking down the infamous Hydra market two years ago, which had a major impact on overall revenue generated by criminal marketplaces in 2022. The operation comes several months after German police took down a notorious dark web marketplace known as Kingdom Market. “The internet is not an area free of criminal prosecution,” German federal police President Holger Münch has repeatedly declared.
- Authorities from multiple countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United States, worked together to investigate and take down a major online criminal marketplace, demonstrating the need for cross-border efforts to combat cyber-enabled crime.
- The Dutch national police’s Cyber Enabled Crime Team was involved in the operation, codenamed SpecTor.
- Where one marketplace collapses, Telegram facilitates dozens of replacements, each with lower visibility and faster growth curves.
- Across Europe, 42 arrests were made in Germany, eight in the Netherlands, four in the UK and three in Austria; 121 people were arrested in the US.
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. Operation RapTor builds on the successes of prior years’ operations and takedowns of marketplaces, which resulted in the seizure of darknet infrastructure from Nemesis, Tor2Door, Bohemia, and Kingdom Markets, providing investigators across the world with investigative leads and evidence. 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.
The change in tactics netted a record number of arrests for the operation, beating the 150 arrested following the takedown of DarkMarket, and 179 following the takedown of Wall Street Market. Users across multiple forums had previously expressed concerns about being victims of an exit scam, where marketplace administrators simply disappear with customers’ funds. Such signatures are intended to confirm that vendors still have access to their accounts and have not been arrested or compromised. While the method has its limitations, HugBunter argued that failure to provide a cryptographic signature alongside continued account activity could be telling. 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.
PGP support and two-factor authentication are both available on the market as an additional layer of security. Even though relatively small in comparison to the overall retail market for drugs, the sale of pharmaceuticals in these markets is significant and appears to be growing. Europol’s Deputy Executive Director of Operations, Jean-Philippe Lecouffe, called the takedown a decisive strike against a platform that had become a critical node in the global supply chain for some of the world’s most dangerous substances. Three more people were arrested in connection with Crimemarket elsewhere in the country, as police go after users of the site as well as its administrators. German police claim to have disrupted the country’s most popular underground market for drugs and cybercrime. It was in this vacuum that Archetyp emerged, eventually becoming a key landing zone for vendors displaced by earlier market collapses.
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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.
