Although celebrating their success, German authorities say they fear this won’t be the end of the Hydra cyber-crime group, unless they can find and arrest them. It took many months to locate which firm might be hosting Hydra in Germany. But, after a tip-off, German police seized the site’s servers and confiscated €23m (£16.7m) in Bitcoin.
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It is a unique model forged by a mix of necessity and a country with a relatively advanced digital realm. The high risk of buying and selling drugs in Russia, both on the streets and via its unreliable, heavily monitored postal system, led to a new system cloaked by a layer of anonymity. In less than a decade it has become a billion-dollar industry, vastly more valuable than western darknet markets.
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Prior to, but in support of Operation Dark HunTor, Italian authorities also shut down the DeepSea and Berlusconi dark web marketplaces which boasted over 40,000 advertisements of illegal products. Four alleged administrators were arrested, and €3.6 million in cryptocurrencies were seized in coordinated U.S.-Italian operations. There has been a groundbreaking shift in the global drug trade, pioneered in Russia and now spreading globally.
New and potentially more vulnerable population segments can be reached by exploitative drug dealers as they begin to sell on social platforms and the number of drug consumers in the US and around the world grows. The US Drug Enforcement Administration has warned that because dealers are “no longer confined to street corners and the dark web,” social media users’ posts and inboxes can be peppered by dealers seeking to purvey these addictive and, when misused, harmful drugs. Brian usually buys his illegal drugs from “traditional dealers,” as he put it. But occasionally, he’ll ask a friend who already uses a darknet marketplace to get him something from there. He’s heard too many stories about buyers getting busted when law enforcement organizations take over sites to feel comfortable.
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Over a third featured cannabis derivatives (37 per cent), stimulants (29 percent), and members of the ecstasy family (19 percent). The report further underscores the severe social impacts of this model on Russian society, particularly among young people. Youth are drawn into this high-tech drug economy, often working as couriers or “kladmen” for online shops—a job that comes with high risks, including violence, criminal charges, and addiction. Violence has become endemic in the system, with enforcers, known as “sportsmen,” meting out harsh punishments for couriers suspected of theft or negligence.
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By contrast, Russian-language DNMs serving the post-Soviet states use dead drops as part of the zakladka or “stash” system — bringing together networks of couriers, wholesalers, drug producers, DNM management teams, and even customer service operatives. The balance of evidence suggests that as security techniques are honed, increasing numbers of buyers and sellers are feeling confident enough to evade detection. In its overview of detection methods, the report admits that as the “Internet-facilitated drugs trade is still a relatively new and continuously evolving phenomenon… strategies may not be fully developed yet.” Among the eight most popular marketplaces surveyed, there are plenty of illicit goods and services to buy, the vast majority (57 percent) of the listings were found to offer drugs.
Now based in Dubai, Telegram was started in 2013 by Russian brothers Pavel and Nicolai Durov and now has 700 million active monthly users. A kilo of speed has remained stable at around £1,000, while a kilo of MDMA crystal briefly rose from £5,000 up to £5,500, then came back down to £5,000. A pack of 100,000 valium pills was being offered for an average price of £10,000, while a batch of 1,000 2C-B pills goes for roughly £1,950. The average price of mephedrone, which some vendors have described as being of “pre-2010 ban quality” is £5,000 a kilo.
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- 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.
- I’ve heard from friends and drug-user forums alike that dark-web drugs tend to be of better quality, and that buying in this way reduces some risks.
- “Bitcoin is expensive and highly volatile, so $100 today might be $60 tomorrow (or $160),” Terence told me.
- He exploited the government postal service to distribute drugs across the country, highlighting a vulnerability in the system.
- Darknet Index provides helpful tutorials, news and information to keep users with the latest darknet market news, including new market launches old ones closing and updates on security issues or scams.
Assistant United States Attorney Gregg E. Marmaro of the International Narcotics, Money Laundering, and Racketeering Section prosecuted this case. While enforcement has begun moving upstream – going after technical providers, financial flows and crypto tracing – the system’s adaptability continues to outpace disruption. Until these enablers are addressed, each enforcement success risks becoming just another prelude to the next. BBC Analysis editor Ros Atkins looks at what what is being done to prevent minors seeing harmful content. The actor, who played the Facebook boss, says he is making vulnerable people “feel threatened”.
- All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
- German investigators did manage to take the Darknet marketplace “Wall Street Market” off the net in addition to digging up “Chemical Revolution” last year, thought to be the world’s second-largest illegal marketplace on the Darknet.
- Since the demise of Wall Street and Dream, two new markets, Empire and Nightmare – which both opened over a year ago – have grown rapidly as users have migrated over from closed sites.
- Unsurprisingly, on his arrest, officers found Okparaeke’s Galaxy S5 smartphone was equipped with a Private Internet Access VPN app, the Orbot Tor proxy app for Android and a Bitcoin checker app – classic tools for any darknet dealer.
- The charges in the indictment are merely allegations, and the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
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Taken together, those operations represent the most far-reaching collection of law enforcement actions against the dark web’s economy in at least two years. “You’re seeing the evolution of a coordinated law enforcement effort,” the director of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre said. The JoyInc marketplace was “one of the most prolific methamphetamine and cocaine distributors to ever operate on the darknet,” the Justice Department said in its statement. The website was a bastion of cyber-crime, surviving for more than six years selling drugs and illegal goods. The reviews also revealed the product involved, with the team interested only in cannabis, cocaine, and opiate products. The result is a look at where different types of drugs end up on the darknet.
But according to Meta, no more than 1 in 2,000 views on Facebook is of content that violates its restricted goods policy. Between July and September 2024, Meta says that 96 percent of drug sales content that violated its terms was removed before a user reported it. TikTok, meanwhile, removed 99.5 percent of content violating its policy on alcohol, tobacco, and drugs before it was reported, according to its Community Guidelines Enforcement Report for the second quarter of 2024.
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The drug information organization Pill Report has told of people wiring cash to dealers and getting duped, with nothing sent to them. When one such person interviewed by WIRED sent money for cannabis through a cash transfer app but received nothing in the mail, he reported the account. “It became a threatening match and they sent photos of thugs with guns saying they were going to come for me,” he says. For every illegal drug, there is a combination of emojis that dealers and consumers use to evade detection on social media and messaging platforms. Grapes and baby bottles are the calling cards for codeine-containing cough syrup, or lean.
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And despite being in psychiatric treatment, Marie didn’t feel as if she were improving. She said Telegram has become “a preferred platform for censored and illegal activities” because the platform’s founders have resisted attempts to censor its content or share information with authorities and due to the availability of shopbots which speed up sales. Between March 2021 and April 2022 the UK’s border force intercepted record amounts of cocaine and ketamine, with seizures of those drugs jumping 68 percent and 884 percent respectively.
