Germany shuts down the world’s largest darknet marketplace, DarkMarket

German law enforcement authorities announced the successful operation to dismantle the darknet marketplace DarkMarket. It was described as the world’s largest darknet marketplace.

The prosecutor’s office reported the arrest of a 34-year-old Australian citizen—the alleged operator of the platform.

Law enforcement also disconnected DarkMarket from its servers. Twenty of them were located in Moldova and Ukraine.

Before its closure, the platform had around half a million users and more than 2,400 sellers. It primarily sold drugs, counterfeit money, stolen or forged credit-card data, anonymous SIM cards, and malware through DarkMarket.

At least 320,000 transactions were conducted via the platform, with payments made in cryptocurrencies — more than 4,650 bitcoins and 12,800 Monero moved. The turnover amounted to about €140 million.

The operation was conducted in cooperation with law enforcement agencies from Australia, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Moldova, the United States, Ukraine and Switzerland, as well as American intelligence agencies.

Based on data stored on the seized servers, authorities seek further information about the organizers, sellers and buyers of DarkMarket.

In recent years, authorities from several countries have shut down a number of large marketplaces. Read about the most high-profile operations in ForkLog’s exclusive.

The darknet Pantheon, or what awaits the deep web after a string of illicit markets closures

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