Our opioid jargon identification procedure implemented a modified semantic comparison model . For forum corpora, we gathered 1,138,961 traces (spanning from June 2011 to July 2015) from the underground forums The Hub, Silk Road, Black Market, Evolution, Hydra, and Pandora. However, some sites, namely, the Empire Market, forced users to log out when the life span of the session cookie was expired.
Crimes Of The Times: Killer With A Badge: How The LAPD Missed A Murderer In Its Ranks
If you want to test your organization’s resilience or hunt down hidden vulnerabilities before criminals do, DeepStrike can help. In practice, no market in the past decade has survived indefinitely. Modern darknet investigations rely on a mix of technology and teamwork. With Archetyp offline announced by Europol on June 23, 2025, Europe lost one of its major fentanyl pipelines just as overdose deaths were surging. According to Europol, the operation froze about €7.8 million in assets. German police BKA led a coordinated raid involving Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Romania and U.S. authorities.
The Use Of Crypto In Vendor Shop Drug Sales Surged In 2024
Following these events commentators suggested that further market decentralization could be required, such as the service OpenBazaar, in order to protect buyers and vendors from this risk in the future as well as more widespread support from “multi-sig” cryptocurrency payments. The months and years after Silk Road’s closure were marked by a greatly increased number of shorter-lived markets as well as semi-regular law enforcement takedowns, hacks, scams and voluntary closures. The Postal Inspection Service was able to shut these vendors down with help from an ever-growing network of partnerships with law enforcement agencies across the globe. Nemesis was established in 2021 and operated as a criminal marketplace on the darknet, an encrypted network within the Internet that can only be accessed with special anonymity-enhancing browsers. Treasury remains focused on the risks posed by darknet marketplaces, as highlighted in previous designations of Genesis Market on April 5, 2023, and of Hydra Market on April 5, 2022.
The Russian Underworld Since The Ukraine Invasion
As Europol’s Rob Wainwright noted, users flocked to Hansa expecting refuge, only to be swept up in a trap. On July 19 20, 2017 the Dutch and Europol publicly announced Hansa’s takedown, having collected data on 10,000 buyer addresses and seized 1,000 BTC in escrow. Law enforcement had modified Hansa’s code to log private messages and even capture passwords and IP addresses.
- While law enforcement efforts often lead to takedowns, new platforms frequently emerge to replace them.
- Due to the novelty of these substances (and the fact that many are analogs) the true number of overdoses in Europe could be higher, as forensic drug testing may lag behind the pace of the crisis.
- “No matter where criminals hide, we will find them, dismantle their operations, and bring them to justice.
- The market owners set up a phishing website to get the attacker’s password, and subsequently revealed collaboration between the attacker and the administrator of Mr Nice Guy’s market who was also planning to scam his users.
- Anonymous online marketplaces and forums usually operate as hidden Tor services, which can only be resolved through Tor (an anonymity network).
How The Internet Changed Drug Dealing Forever
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. Marcantonio Juarez Velasquez, 20, of Annandale, was sentenced today to 15 years in prison for possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime and possession with intent… Roberts promoted the quality of the pills that he advertised for sale on his Darknet vendor page. In Grand Theft Auto Online, players who purchase warehouses and garages for illicit cargo and stolen cars can buy/steal and sell them through trade on the “SecuroServ” syndicate website.
Specifically, we first conducted a whole-site crawl of anonymous online marketplaces and forums to solicit data. To this end, we propose a series of techniques to collect data; identify opioid jargon terms used in the anonymous marketplaces and forums; and profile the opioid commodities, suppliers, and transactions. Quintana et al and Fernando et al presented the results of the international drug testing service for opioid commodities from the anonymous marketplaces and showed that most opioid substances contained the advertised ingredient and most samples were of high purity. Recent years have witnessed the trend of studying opioid use disorders using anonymous marketplaces and forums data 5,8,10 and public social media data (eg, Twitter and Instagram) 11-14. First, an opioid trader, who intends to list the selling information and find potential customers, will first access the anonymous online marketplaces and forums, using an anonymous browsing tool such as a Tor client or a web-to-Tor proxy (step 1 in Figure 1) 5,6.
Time Of Troubles: The Russian Underworld Since The Ukraine Invasion
Users of cryptomarkets often integrate drug-purchase and consumption repertoires across multiple sites, online and offline, and cryptomarkets can be one element. Cryptomarkets may provide new data sources which can inform our understanding of drug markets. “Some people you’re not going to deter from going to these markets. But there are a large number of people who would never considering buying drugs on a street corner or from a shady dealer but who will use the perceived anonymity of the internet to do this,” Europol’s Steven Wilson says. After the late 2013 takedown of the Silk Road, the first real dark-web drug market, more than a dozen replacements rose up to fill the demand for anonymous online narcotics sales. Or that a multiagency US law enforcement task force devoted to stemming opioid sales on the dark web arrested more than 60 people in a major operation the month before. “As law enforcement authorities gained access to the vendors’ extensive buyer lists, thousands of customers across the globe are now at risk of prosecution as well.”
Although a large body of current research is focused on pathways for treatment of opioid use disorder and analyzing deaths per treatment capacity of substance use providers, these research areas are limited to the demand side of the opioid epidemic 40,41. Nontraditional methods, as presented here by studying the online supply chain, present a novel approach for governmental and other large-scale solutions. We observed that 145 opioid suppliers had 378 positive reviews, whereas 102 opioid suppliers had at least one negative review.
This system, offering convenience and anonymity, has seen synthetic drugs—especially synthetic cathinones like mephedrone—overtake traditional imported substances like cocaine and heroin in Russia. Enabled by these conditions, the dead drop model has reshaped how drugs are distributed in Russia. I went into the interrogation room and sat for about an hour while presumably, they opened and field tested the drugs in my package.
Simultaneously, Dutch police quietly took over Hansa Market, a Tor site popular in Europe in June 2017. It sold deadly narcotics fentanyl, heroin, stolen IDs, malware tools, firearms and more. After Silk Road’s fall, AlphaBay rose in late 2014 as the largest dark web market ever. It marketed itself as a black market bazaar and sold everything from marijuana to heroin, plus hacking tools and counterfeit IDs.
The first marketplace to use both Tor and Bitcoin escrow was Silk Road, founded by Ross Ulbricht under pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts” in February 2011. In the 2000s, early cybercrime and carding forums such as ShadowCrew experimented with drug wholesaling on a limited scale. One of the better-known web-based drug forums, The Hive, launched in 1997, serving as an information sharing forum for practical drug synthesis and legal discussion.
Russia’s Darknet Drug Empire: The Future Of Online Trafficking
“This unprecedented operation is a testament to the power of global partnership and the unwavering dedication of our team,” said Chief Guy Ficco of IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI). “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.” “These predators who peddled poison on the dark web might have thought they are untouchable — hiding behind screens, pushing fentanyl, fueling overdoses, and cashing in on misery. However, Operation RapTor just proved them wrong,” said DEA Acting Administrator Robert Murphy. 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.
A number of studies suggest that markets such as Silk Road may have helped users reduce the harm caused by illicit drug use, particularly compared with street-based drug marketplaces. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Iran-based Behrouz Parsarad (Parsarad), the sole administrator of Nemesis, an online darknet marketplace, which was subject of an international law enforcement operation and was taken down in 2024. Rather than carrying out exit scams, common in Western illicit markets, Russian darknet administrators often allow users to withdraw funds before shutting down operations. By selling drugs through what’s commonly known as “the darknet,” a collection of underground marketplaces accessible only through specialized software, the group amassed a small fortune over just two years. These markets host hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of people who sell drugs, commonly referred to as “vendors”. Four men were arrested in Glendale and Sherman Oaks on federal charges alleging they worked to distribute various drugs, including cocaine, methamphetamine, MDMA and ketamine, on hidden online marketplaces, officials announced Thursday.
Vendors Shift To Encrypted Channels
To list on a market, a vendor may have undergone an application process via referral, proof of reputation from another market or given a cash deposit to the market. The discontinued Helix Bitcoin tumbler offered direct anonymized marketplace payment integrations. Transactions typically use Bitcoin for payment, sometimes combined with tumblers for added anonymity and PGP to secure communications between buyers and vendors from being stored on the site itself.
Furthermore, all marketplaces accept forms of cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin. Once on a dark web marketplace, users often maintain their anonymity by communicating through encrypted messages, making it difficult for anyone to intercept and read. As they were setting up the ring, McDonald told Rodriguez he was in Kentucky manufacturing the drugs they would later sell. The smuggling ring targeted this week received cryptocurrency in exchange for shipments of drugs. Four days later, McDonald organized a packing spree at his Van Nuys residence to get 30 orders of drugs ready to be shipped.
- It raises new challenges for new law enforcement agencies to identify opioid suppliers, buyers, or even takedown the marketplace.
- Synthetic opioids, mostly fentanyl, kill more Americans every year than died in the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.
- If you want to test your organization’s resilience or hunt down hidden vulnerabilities before criminals do, DeepStrike can help.
- He recommends verifying market employees carefully, and to weed out law enforcement infiltration through barium meal tests.
- If a mail isn’t tracked, police can’t execute controlled delivery.
A further PIN may be required to perform transactions, better protecting users against login credential compromise. This led to the rise of Dread, the dedicated darknet discussion forum and the news site Darknetlive (since closed). One of the central discussion forums was Reddit’s /r/DarkNetMarkets/, which has been the subject of legal investigation, as well as the Tor-based discussion forum, The Hub. Later that month, the long-lived Outlaw market closed down citing a major bitcoin cryptocurrency wallet theft; however, speculation remained that it was an exit scam. Further market diversification occurred in 2015, as did further developments around escrow and decentralization.
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime
The use of cryptocurrency in vendor shop drug sales saw a significant surge over the past year. The departure of market leaders such as Solaris Market — which ceased operations in autumn 2024 — is a rare occurrence. Russian darknet market admins are now experimenting with developments including artificial intelligence-facilitated dispute resolution, closer integration with encrypted communication applications, incentive programs, harm reduction, UX customization, and aggressive marketing campaigns across digital and physical spaces. In addition to Wednesday’s arrests, agents served multiple federal search warrants and found evidence to include large amounts of cash, distribution amounts of suspected drugs. The defendants then allegedly shipped the drugs throughout the United States via the United States Postal Service. On February 22, 2023, law enforcement executed search warrants at Blair’s residence in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, and other locations.
