This operation against illegal trade on the Dark Web has also enabled the seizure of 26.7 million euros in cash and cryptomonnays, some 25,000 ecstasy tablets and 45 firearms.
Le Monde with AFP
Some 150 people were arrested as part of a global police operation against illegal trade on the Dark Web – illegal version of the Internet – announced Tuesday, October 26, the European Police Agency Europol, based on Hague.
Many million euros in cash and Bitcoins as well as drugs and weapons were seized in this operation called “Darkhuntor” which followed the dismantling in January, under the conduct of the German police, the platform. Darkmarket shape, then presented by investigators like the “wider” point of sale of the black cybermarket.
The operation “consisted of a series of separate, but complementary actions, Australia, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States,” specified Europol.
26.7 million euros and 25,000 Ecstasy tablets seized
In the United States, 65 people were arrested in this operation which also allowed, among others, 47 arrests in Germany, 24 in the United Kingdom, four in Italy and four in the Netherlands. Many of the arrested people “were of importance targets” for Europol. The police also seized 26.7 million euros in cash and electronic currencies as well as drugs, including 25,000 ecstasy tablets, and 45 firearms.
In Italy, the police also closed illegal marketplaces named “Deepsea” and “Berlusconi” which had two “more than 100,000 ads of illegal products”, according to Europol, whose operation was coordinated with Eurojust, the European Agency for Judicial Cooperation.
The interpellation in January of the alleged operator of Darkmarket, an Australian 34-year-old arrested on the German-Danish border, “provided investigators around the world a treasure of evidence”, according to Europol. The dismantling of the platform, which sold drugs of all kinds such as false currency, stolen or falsified credit card data, anonymous SIM cards or computer viruses, was linked to a given net. September 2019 in Germany against an important Illegal Service Host of the Dark Net called Cyberbunker, had specified the parquet at the time.
Turning in police action against the Dark Web
This illegal data center, installed in a former NATO bunker in southwestern Germany, is suspected of having accommodated several drug sales platforms, but also servers used for traffic Pedoporographic images or cyberattacks. The European Center for the Fight Against Cybercrime, EC3, from Europol has since accumulated information to identify key targets, explains the agency.
The net Dark, a parallel version of the fabric where the anonymity of the users has been guaranteed, undergoes increasing assaults for a few months from international policies. “The object of operations like this is to mean criminals operating on the Dark Web [that] the community to enforce the law has international means and partnerships to unmask and ask them for accounts for their activities illegal, even in areas of the Dark Web, said Tuesday the Deputy Director of Operations in Europol, Jean-Philippe Lecouffe.
For Rolf Van Wegberg, Cybercrime Researcher at the Delft University of Technology, the operation marks a change in police action against alleged criminals acting on the Internet. “In the past, this type of operation aimed to stop operators of this kind of marketplaces and we do not see police services on the main sellers,” he said on the Dutch public channel Kro-NCRV.