Cryptocurrency tracing has also played a central role in expanding those operation’s targets.

This has allowed them to carry out more far-reaching roundups of the dark web’s most prolific dealers, who are often active across multiple markets. But the Monopoly takedown, in particular, was kept under wraps for well over a year as law enforcement agencies worldwide followed leads from the case: A statement from Europol notes that “target packages” were “created by cross-matching and analyzing the collected data and evidence” from the seizure of Monopoly’s infrastructure.Īll of that points to law enforcement’s increasing exploitation of the bonanza of evidence obtained in dark web takedowns. In his statement, Garland referred to both the takedown of Hydra, a Russia-based market that served as a massive hub of online drug sales and money laundering, and the smaller dark web black market Genesis, which focused on cybercrime products and services.

“The Justice Department is cracking down on criminal cryptocurrency transactions and the online criminal marketplaces that enable them.”Īlong with Monopoly, Operation SpecTor appears to have exploited information obtained in previous dark web takedowns too. “This represents the most funds seized and the highest number of arrests in any coordinated international action led by the Department of Justice against drug traffickers on the dark web,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters in a press conference. In Operation SpecTor, investigators appear to have leveraged information obtained through the seizure of Monopoly’s servers and data from other dark web market takedowns in recent years to find leads on hundreds of the dark web’s drug dealers-and even customers-on an unprecedented scale. Europol simultaneously revealed that German police had taken down the dark web site Monopoly Market, which had gone offline in late 2021 under mysterious circumstances, leaving many of its users to wonder if the market’s administrators had pulled an “exit scam” in which they absconded with users’ funds.

Officials also announced the seizure of nearly 1 ton of drugs, $53 million in cash and cryptocurrencies, and 117 firearms. Today, the US Department of Justice, Europol, and a list of law enforcement agencies in at least nine countries from Brazil to Poland revealed Operation SpecTor, a collection of dark web investigations that led to the arrest of 288 people worldwide-153 of whom were in the US.

Dragnet nation