Marketplace Takedowns and the Government

Kai Marshall

● Hansa takedown ~2017)

In 2016 the dutch got word of a secret dark web marketplace and instead of taking it down they

decided to take over the site. It all started with a finding of a Hansa server in the Netherlands

data center while the actual Hansa site was safe on Tor a development site was uncovered and

that's what led to the main fall of Hansa. The dutch police quickly moved onto this seeing an

opportunity to gain access to the data. When the dutch police got access they installed

networking monitors to spy on the site and server. They found other servers not only in the

Netherlands but also a couple in Germany. They made a copy of each drive and had seen every

single transaction that happened on Hansa. The dutch police came in contact and discovered

the two admins and their location. Both of them were in their 30’s and lived across the border to

germany. The dutch contacted the german police and asked for the arrest of the two but since

the german had them on their radar already they used the germans arrest to take over the site

themselves, they got rid of the admins to become the admins themselves. It was then shut

down a month later after recovery.

● Alphabay (takedown ~2017)

Was considered the “son” of silk road and filled the gap in which silk road couldn’t after the

takedown in 2013. Alphabay was one of the largest market places in the dark web to this date

with around 200,000 users and 40,000 vendors at its disposal. The mission to takedown the site

was led by the FBI with the help of the Thai, Netherlands, Canada, and other countries police

departments. The mission was a success following the arrest of 25 year old Alexandre Cazes
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Kai Marshall

who was also known as “Alpha02” online. After Cazes arrest he committed suicde a week later

because of confinement. The takedown was successful because now since the market is on Tor

the FBI feels confident they can hide the servers.

● Dream Market (takedown ~2019)

Founded in 2013 and was found in secrecy on the dark web, it was used to sell a variety of

drugs and narcotics also including crypto currency and illegal goods. Following in the footsteps

of its predecessors Alphabay and Hansa, the Dream Market was titled the second largest

market place on the dark web. After the shutdown of Alphabay and Hansa many dark web users

moved their shopping towards the Dream Market until 2016 with the arrest of the vendor and

admin Gal Vallierius when he came across a border search, his online profile name was

OxyMonster shortly after the attacks on the other market places the Dream Market came under

control by the Dutch police. Over 61 arrests and shutdown of 40 web accounts 7 million in

cash/cryptocurrency were seized March 12 before the shutdown April 30th. In the end the site

was successfully taken over by the police and got a similar idea from the dutch police to use it

as a crime hub for 30 days after being shut down.

● Wall Street Market (takedown ~2019)

Wall Street Market shut down was led by the German special police the

Bundeskriminalamt and the German public prosecutor office along with the dutch police

and government,the US and Europol where also on the case Wall Street Market was so

big that it was considered the second largest dark market in the dark web with over

150,000 users and 6,000 vendors business was frequent on the site. The 3 men who
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Kai Marshall

run the website are Tibo Lousee, Jonathan Kalla and Klaus-Martin Frost with the

investigation being ongoing since 2017. Since the 3 men knew that their site would

eventually go down they tried to pull an exit scam in transferring all the bitcoin into cash.

The Feds couldn’t let that happen so they had to move with caution. Frost VPN had

failed him from weak connection and due to some detective work the police were able to

figure him out. Unlike Frost, Kallas VPN was strong but his metadata failed him. After

finding Kalla then admitted to being an admin of the site after questioning. For Frost his

actions of money transactions were used against him the United States Postal Service

recognized a group of transactions used by Frost Wallet’s he used 2 Wallets to where

they transfer funds from one another. The cases were held in multiple countries and

multiple authorities.

● DarkMarket (takedown ~2021)

As of this date the world's largest market the “Dark Market” became a hit with 500,000

users, more than 2,400 sellers and about 320,000 transactions. The sum of all the

transactions could result in about 140 million US dollars moved through the site. Taking

a quote from a site i researched “The Central Criminal Investigation Department in the

German city of Oldenburg arrested an Australian citizen who is the alleged operator

of DarkMarket near the German-Danish border over the weekend. The investigation,

which was led by the cybercrime unit of the Koblenz Public Prosecutor's Office”.

Apparently an Australian citizen has not been named yet or announced to the
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general public except his arrest. Working with the Authorities of different countries

like, US, Denmark, U.K, Australian and others the operation took months but was

successful and the charges against the criminal are still pending.

Sources:

https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/double-blow-to-dark-web-marketplaces

https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/03/how-german-and-us-authorities-took-down-the-

owners-of-darknet-drug-emporium-wall-street-market/