In spite of Hydra Market’s disruption in 2022, former Hydra affiliates still found operating in today’s DNMs rely heavily on these infrastructure providers. Last December, a Russian court imposed a life sentence on Stanislav Moiseyev, Hydra Market’s suspected founder and operator, although the Moscow prosecutor’s office did not publicly tie the guilty verdict to Hydra. The court also sentenced fifteen accomplices to anywhere from eight to 23 years in maximum-security penal colonies. The action built upon the previous takedowns of dark web marketplaces like Kingdom Markets, Incognito, Nemesis, Bohemia and Tor2Door.
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From June 11 to 13, 2025, law enforcement authorities in Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and the United States executed a series of synchronized actions targeting the platform’s administrator, moderators, top vendors, and core infrastructure. Approximately 300 officers were deployed to secure digital evidence, seize assets, and arrest key suspects. The takedown was led by German authorities, with Europol and Eurojust facilitating intelligence sharing, operational coordination, and legal cooperation across borders. Archetyp Market, which boasted more than 600,000 users, operated for more than five years and contained more than 17,000 listings for illicit substances, including cocaine, MDMA and amphetamines. Europol also said the market allowed the sale of fentanyl and “other highly potent synthetic opioids.”Authorities seized the site’s online infrastructure, which was hosted in the Netherlands, and arrested its 30-year-old German administrator in Barcelona, Spain. A moderator and six prominent vendors were arrested simultaneously in other countries, and officers seized assets worth about $9 million.
Office Of The Chief Data Officer
They seized $6.5 million in crypto and cash, 500kg in drugs—274kg of which was seized in the US, and the 63 guns. Authorities arrested 123 North Americans, including two in Canada, and a further 58 in Europe; in Germany, authorities arrested 42. In 2023, the New York Police Department (NYPD) Intelligence Bureau, which predominantly handles counter terrorism cases, received a tip about two people in New York City involved in manufacturing and selling ghost guns.
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- Joseph Vasquez pleaded guilty on April 15, 2024, and was sentenced on Aug. 8, 2024, to 10 years in prison.
- Further confounding efforts, these multiple markets are often scattered across different regions and jurisdictions, requiring significant international cooperation to drive operations.
- Despite the fact Archetyp had clearly raised the bar on security on the dark web, Operation Deep Sentinel – a collaborative effort between law enforcement agencies in six countries supported by Europol and Eurojust – took down the market.
- The operation resulted in the seizure of 50.8 million euros ($53.4 million) — in cash and virtual currencies, nearly 1,900 pounds of drugs and 117 firearms in a series of raids in several countries.
The suspected admin of the operations owns property in Hanover and Bucharest too, all of which were searched by domestic law enforcement. “The investigation to bring to justice the administrators of and vendors on Nemesis Market continues,” a spokesperson for the U.S. German law enforcement hasn’t responded to Recorded Future News’ request for comment about whether the website’s administrators were arrested.
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In parallel, measures were taken in Germany and Sweden against one moderator and six of the marketplace’s highest vendors, and assets worth €7.8 million seized. The Monopoly Market takedown was one of the largest law enforcement actions taken against a darknet marketplace. The resulting arrests overshadowed the 150 arrests made following the takedown of DarkMarket in 2021, and 179 following the takedown of Wall Street Market in 2019. Milomir Desnica is accused of launching and running Monopoly since late 2019, using the platform to facilitate the sale of various drugs including opioids, stimulants, psychedelics, and prescription medications. He made approximately $18 million on the platform through cryptocurrency transactions, the DOJ said. Europol said a large-scale operation saw it dismantle Archetyp Market, described as a “drug marketplace” that allowed, among other things, the sale of fentanyl, one of the most dangerous synthetic opioids out there.
While the method has its limitations, HugBunter argued that failure to provide a cryptographic signature alongside continued account activity could be telling. On the Reddit-style dark web forum known as “Dread,” users are trying to determine which vendors were compromised by the operation, Straight Arrow News found. The dark web is a collection of sites that are not indexed by search engines and can only be viewed with specialized web browsers designed to provide privacy and anonymity. Many sites specialize in selling illegal goods that are not readily available on the public internet. Just this week, Telegram shut down Haowang Guarantee, a sprawling black market linked to over $27 billion in illicit transactions across Asia’s cyber scam economy. Established in 2018, J-CODE seeks to detect, disrupt, and dismantle the most prolific criminal enterprises that rely on the internet or advanced technology to facilitate the trafficking of opioids.
Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office Takes Down Hydra Darknet Marketplace
Visitors to the cybercrime website were greeted on Thursday with a red banner announcing the takeover. At the bottom, the police placed an animated spaceship reminiscent of a 1990s video game called Nemesis. PCMag.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering lab-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services.
German Authorities Shut Down Online Marketplace For Drugs, Data And Cybercrime Services
Others, particularly those based in Russia, focus solely on info stealer hacking tools and brokering stolen data. In another significant case, Brian McDonald of California copped a 20-year sentence after admitting he used various darknet aliases to sling fentanyl and cocaine nationwide. Tragically, investigators linked at least one confirmed overdose death directly to his operation. The Dutch national police’s Cyber Enabled Crime Team was involved in the operation, codenamed SpecTor. “It’s safe to assume many of these people didn’t encrypt their shipping addresses, were low hanging fruit for law enforcement to call it a huge ‘operation’,” tweeted DarkDotFail. Darknet markets are, after all, very tiny in the grand scheme of things, the research said.
According to the indictment, financial transactions on Empire Market used cryptocurrency to conceal the nature of the transactions and the identities of Empire Market administrators, moderators, vendors, and buyers. Law enforcement shutdowns are also only one type of disruption that dark web communities face. Dark web market users routinely face voluntary closures (the gradual retirement of a market), exit scams (sudden closures of markets where any money in escrow is taken), or even scheduled maintenance of these markets. In some cases, established sellers on closed-down markets are welcomed onto new markets as digital “refugees” and have joining fees waived. These included an advanced encryption program known as “Pretty Good Privacy” and a cryptocurrency called Monero.
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Avalyan is charged with one count of distribution of cocaine, one count of distribution of MDMA, and one count of distribution of distribution of methamphetamine. Gevorgyan is charged with one count of possession with intent to distribute MDMA and one count of possession with intent to distribute ketamine. Grigoryan is charged with one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine. Nersesyan is charged with three counts of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, one count of possession with intent to distribute cocaine, and one count of possession with intent to distribute MDMA. All four defendants are charged with one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, ketamine, and MDMA (Ecstasy).
Financial Markets, Financial Institutions, And Fiscal Service
This operation led by the German authorities marks the end of a criminal service that enabled the anonymous trade in high volumes of illicit drugs, including cocaine, MDMA, amphetamines, and synthetic opioids. The platform’s endurance, scale and reputation within the criminal community place it alongside now-defunct darknet markets such as Dream Market and Silk Road, both notorious for their role in facilitating online drug trafficking. Archetyp Market arrived online in 2020 and grew into a significant hub for online drug trafficking. Until this month, it had evaded the law enforcement operations that took down other major dark web marketplaces. Archetyp facilitated the sale of cocaine, MDMA, amphetamines, and highly potent synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. Today (June 16, 2025), Europol announced the successful dismantling of Archetyp Market, the longest-running darknet drug marketplace, following a sweeping international operation coordinated across six countries.
Like DNMs, online pharmacies receive most of their revenues from larger drug resellers. Historically, DNMs have usually cashed out their funds at centralized exchanges (CEXs). Although CEXs remain a stable destination in the DNM ecosystem, the pattern of sending funds to them shifted in 2024, as illustrated in the chart below. Last year, DNM vendors sent a significantly higher portion of their funds to DeFi than they did historically. Throughout 2024, DNM vendors also sent far more value to personal wallets and stored funds on-chain.
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A pharmacist in Nebraska allegedly planned to firebomb a local competitor after stealing their opiate supply, in service of what officials say was his booming narcotics trafficking business. Crimenetwork enabled buyers and sellers to trade stolen data, drugs, forged documents and other illegal goods and services, the BKA said. It had been operating since 2012 and built up a following of over 100,000 users and more than 100 sellers, mainly from German-speaking countries. The other emerging issue is that current policing efforts treat dark web markets as the core threat, which might miss the wider landscape of digital harms.
HugBunter, the anonymous user who founded the forum in 2018, asked “market admins, vendors, and other service operators” to provide “proof-of-life” by signing posts with what’s known as a PGP encrypted signature, a form of cryptographic proof. The platform was active on the darknet, a part of the internet accessible only through specialized tools that provide more anonymity. It was founded in 2021 and had more than 150,000 user accounts and over 1,100 seller accounts worldwide, nearly 20% of the latter in Germany, according to German authorities.
