Investigators said it’s tracked down more than 18,000 customers from the dark web market bust.
Angela Lang/CNET
The Department of Justice announced the largest dark web bust it’s ever carried out, seizing more than 500 kilograms of drugs from 179 alleged online dealers around the world. The US worked with police in Europe to carry out the investigation, seizing more than $6.5 million in cash and virtual currencies.
Operation DisrupTor — named after the private web browser Tor frequently used to access the dark web — was led by police in Germany, along with law enforcement agencies in the US and Europol.
The majority of the arrests took place in the US, with 121 cases, followed by 42 cases in Germany, eight cases in the Netherlands, four cases in the United Kingdom, three cases in Austria and one case in Sweden. Police said that investigations are still ongoing to identify people behind these dark web accounts.
The dark web is a catch-all name for hidden parts of the internet that you can’t easily discover through an online search, and often host marketplaces to selling illegal goods like drugs, stolen data and weapons.
The operation announced on Tuesday was the US’s “largest operation to date” on the dark web, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said at a press conference. Arrests included a group named “Pill Cosby” that distributed more than 1 million fentanyl-laced pills in Washington, DC and an investigation on a dark web hitman believed to be responsible for murdering an elderly couple in Georgia.
“These darknet marketplaces have grown in popularity at an alarming rate and allow drug traffickers to openly advertise and take orders from anywhere in the world,” Rosen said. “The dark net invites criminals into our homes, and provides unlimited access to illegal commerce.”
Operation DisrupTor used information from another major darknet market in April 2019, FBI director Christopher Wray said. Last year, international agencies took down the Wall Street Market, one of the largest dark web marketplaces online.
Investigators said they’ve tracked down more than 18,000 listed sales to customers in at least 35 states and in several countries around the world. Wray noted that there’s been a spike in opioid-related overdose deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the FBI would continue investigating dark web drug markets.
“Today’s announcement sends a strong message to criminals selling or buying illicit goods on the dark web: the hidden internet is no longer hidden, and your anonymous activity is not anonymous,” Edvardas Šileris, the head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, said in a statement.
