SYDNEY, Australia (CU)_A German-led police sting has taken down the world’s largest online illegal marketplace and has arrested the alleged operator, who is a 34-year-old Australian national, prosecutors announced on Tuesday (Jan 12).
According to a statement issued by the prosecutors, the investigators were able to shut down the market place on Monday, and at the time of its closure, DarkMarket had nearly 500,000 users and more than 2,400 vendors worldwide.
It is also reported that a total of at least 320,000 transactions were carried out via the market place with two of the most common cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and monero valued at €140m (US$170.9m) changed hands.
The prime suspect, who was arrested near the German-Danish border, was brought before a judge but declined to speak.
The prosecutors say that in addition to stolen and fake credit cards, counterfeit money and anonymous Sim cards, the marketplace also offered various kinds of drugs, as the COVID-19 pandemic led much of the street trade in narcotics to go online.
Investigators expect to use the data saved in the servers used by DarkMarket to launch new probes against the moderators, sellers and buyers of the marketplace.
According to the prosecutors, DarkMarket came to light in the course of major investigation against the web-hosting service Cyberbunker, located in a former Nato bunker in south-western Germany.
The Europol, the American FBI, DEA narcotics law enforcement division and IRS tax authority, along with police from Australia, Britain, Switzerland, Denmark, Ukraine and Moldova took part in the probe.
