This protects vendors from many risks that are prevalent in other forms of drug supply, including undercover police, predatory standover tactics where suppliers may be robbed, assaulted or even killed by competitors, and customers who may inform on their supplier if caught. The data analysed in this study was scraped from the Dark0de Reborn darknet market between June 10 and June 27, 2021. The darknet market was scraped in its entirety, and all products available at the time of data capture were scraped. The darknet was scraped by a custom-written crawler (The Dark Crawler), which allowed the entire platform, product per product, to be scraped. All content on each page was captured, including product name, description, price, and vendor instructions. Vendors placed the products into categories, which were clearly displayed on the page of each product and were captured as part of the data capture, and then used later to select the products for analysis.
And in countries with less robust human rights records, they are also at risk of brutality from inmates and correctional officials. In contrast to the ROK — where dealers appear to be largely Korean nationals — the dead drop networks in South East Asia are dominated by the Russian-speaking diaspora, which has grown since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022. Darknet forums like RuTor have even hosted dedicated discussion areas for Russian-speaking expats living in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, and Dubai. The vast majority of drug stores identified by TRM Labs appear to be run by Russian-speaking vendors mostly targeting tourists. OFAC’s Economic Sanctions Enforcement Guidelines provide more information regarding OFAC’s enforcement of U.S. sanctions, including the factors that OFAC generally considers when determining an appropriate response to an apparent violation. It is a priority for CBC to create products that are accessible to all in Canada including people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive challenges.
Is It Illegal To Access The Dark Web?
The Dark0de Reborn darknet market, whose predecessor was a hacker forum that operated until 2015, opened in May 2020 and closed in February 2022. The closure was presumably the result of an exit scam, i.e. the intentional shutting down of the market by its operators to acquire the funds in deposit. While it existed, this darknet market was a dominant player among illegal online drug markets based on daily minimum sales (The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2023). Thus, although Dark0de Reborn was only a slice of the darknet drug markets, the data scraped from it provided an opportunity to directly examine community factors behind the operation of darknet drug markets on one of its flagship platforms. Among these, trust in the quality of products and their perceived value for money are important elements, in addition to the accurate description and visual presentation of the products, which are as important as optimal pricing (Al-Dwairi, 2013; Karimov & Brengman, 2014). Legal web markets often use the price comparison function to allow customers to compare prices with other online markets.
More Customer-focused
Assistant United States Attorney James Santiago of the Transnational Organized Crime Section is prosecuting this case. If convicted of all charges, each defendant would face a statutory maximum sentence of life in federal prison. JoyInc is believed to have been operating since at least 2018 and is one of the most prolific methamphetamine and cocaine distributors to ever operate on the darknet. 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.
The Dark Web As A Platform For Crime: An Exploration Of Illicit Drug, Firearm, CSAM, And Cybercrime Markets
HSI is a worldwide law enforcement leader in Darknet and other cyber-related criminal investigations. The DHS Cyber Crimes Center (C3) combats cybercrime, online child sexual exploitation, and criminal exploitation of the internet with state-of-the-art forensic technology. The Center investigates large-scale cybercrime threats and provides expertise on cybercrime investigations to the field. It also uses global law enforcement networks, like Europol, to combat cybercrime threats. On March 20, 2024, U.S., German, and Lithuanian law enforcement agencies seized Nemesis’ servers in a joint operation. Since the takedown of Nemesis, Parsarad has discussed setting up a new darknet marketplace to take the place of Nemesis with vendors that were once active on the marketplace.
One of the most significant features of digital markets is that they facilitate the introduction of drugs to new areas, which in turn affects consumption patterns. By connecting with vendors worldwide, consumers can access drugs that were previously unavailable locally. For example, recent investigations have found that the synthetic psychedelic drug 2C-B has become more prevalent in rural areas of Scotland due to its availability on the dark web.
More than six years after the demise of Silk Road, the world’s first major drug cryptomarket, the dark web is still home to a thriving trade in illicit drugs. TRM currently assesses that between 20 and 30 significant drug-focused DNMs are active at any given time—a number that has remained remarkably consistent over the past several years. Their longevity is generally short-lived, with most platforms shuttering or collapsing within two to three years due to law enforcement pressure, market volatility, or internal instability. “While one person can register infrastructure or oversee a platform’s setup, a darknet marketplace of Nemesis’s size typically requires a broader operational team,” according to Ari Redbord, TRM’s Global Head of Policy when asked by Decrypt if Parsarad likely acted alone. For the first time, FBI agents from all of the bureau’s field offices visited buyers to tell them about the overdose danger of pills sold online, which are often disguised to look like prescription drugs. The number of arrests and amount of money seized were the most for any international Justice Department-led drug trafficking operation, he said.
In response, social media companies’ algorithms to detect drug-selling behavior are getting smarter and are aggregating images and emojis, Fuller says. “There is an understanding that seeing these ads on social media is correlated to a decreased risk perception, and young people are led to think the drugs are safer.” Of the teenagers she sampled, 10 percent reported purchasing drugs via social media. “Those exposed to drug ads were 17 times more likely to purchase drugs on social media compared to those who had not seen such ads,” she adds.
Online And Offline Determinants Of Drug Trafficking Across Countries Via Cryptomarkets
Operation SpecTor was a collaborative initiative across JCODE members, including the Department of Justice, FBI, DEA, USPIS, HSI, IRS-CI, ATF, Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), and the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations. This operation was aided by non-operational supporting participation from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and U.S. Local, state, and other federal agencies also contributed to Operation SpecTor investigations through task force participation and regional partnerships. U.S. agencies like the FBI, DEA, IRS-CI, and HSI worked alongside Europol, the U.K.’s NCA, and law enforcement from over a dozen countries. At the same time, financial enforcers like OFAC sanctioned individuals running darknet markets—including Iranian national Behrouz Parsarad of Nemesis—demonstrating how financial tools are being brought into alignment with traditional law enforcement.
- Stealth becomes more significant in illegal than in legal commercial transactions, where invisibility can prevent exposure or embarrassment (Aldridge & Askew, 2017).
- Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Iran-based Behrouz Parsarad (Parsarad), the sole administrator of Nemesis, an online darknet marketplace, which was subject of an international law enforcement operation and was taken down in 2024.
- They also emphasise innovation taking place in other related technological domains.
- Emerging markets in Asia and Latin America, such as China, Vietnam and Venezuela, are also becoming more involved in drug purchasing and, to some extent, manufacturing.
- Sellers often need to pay a deposit to prove they’re serious, and they build their reputation through positive reviews.
Drugs And The Darknet
- While these platforms are typically used for retail, darknet markets have increasingly been used for wholesale (The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2023).
- While the above-mentioned examples of interventions effectively reduced the volume of the darknet drug trade, the policy recommendations presented above were designed to be implemented among potential customers.
- Similarly, methamphetamine use has surged in rural American areas, with rates now surpassing those in urban areas, likely due in part to easier access through online platforms.
- “The pandemic has had a major impact on our lives and is slowing down our economy,” Europol chief Catherine De Bolle said in the EMCDDA’s latest joint report on the drug market.
- On the most popular global market, Empire, where many retailers offered lockdown deals, business has been especially brisk, with thousands of positive reviews about drug quality and speed of delivery.
What current policing strategies neglect is that dark web markets are not isolated to the storefronts that are the popular target of crackdowns. These are communities stretched across dark and surface web forums which develop shared tutorials and help one another adapt to any new changes. These closures bind users together and foster a shared resilience and collective experience in navigating these environments.
History Of Dark Web Marketplaces
These markets host hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of people who sell drugs, commonly referred to as “vendors”. The dark web offers vital anonymity for vendors and buyers, who use cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin to process transactions. At TRM, darknet marketplaces are defined narrowly as platforms focused specifically on drug trafficking, such as the now-defunct Silk Road. Other entities that operate on the darknet but deal in malware or stolen credentials are categorized separately as cybercrime platforms—not as DNMs.
The RCMP executed several search warrants, which led to the seizure of 75 kilograms of various narcotics, including cocaine, MDMA, meth, heroin and ketamine, it said in a news release Thursday. The European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA) is your source of drug-related expertise in Europe. Cryptomarkets may define PWUD as consumers and contribute to reshaping their identities around principles of self-directed, informed consumption.
Archetyp Was One Of The Dark Web’s Biggest Drug Markets A Global Sting Has Shut It Down
Srinivasan also used the encrypted messaging application Wickr to communicate with and sell drugs to customers. Srinivasan received virtual currency as payment for the drugs and then routed that virtual currency through cryptocurrency exchanges. “This unprecedented operation is a testament to the power of global partnership and the unwavering dedication of our team,” said Chief Guy Ficco of IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI). Described by Attorney General Pam Bondi as a historic blow to the digital drug trade, the operation targeted individuals in the United States, Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. It marks the most significant JCODE operation to date, building on years of enforcement actions and marketplace takedowns, including Kingdom Market, Tor2Door, Bohemia, and Nemesis.
We now have decades of evidence showing how drug markets will keep on going, whatever the economic or political weather. And while many governments have floundered and faltered, the online drug trade has come out fighting. After Silk Road was shut down by law enforcement, many other markets proliferated, sparking rounds of innovation and disruption between market administrators and law enforcement 18. Disruption tended to demonstrate the resilience of the illicit drug market ecosystem 19.
Axis Intelligence provides dark web surveillance solutions that help businesses identify leaked credentials, fraud attempts, and malware risks before they escalate. Since 2020, 2easy has sold massive stealer logs with sensitive data like passwords, bank cards, and initial access credentials. It supports operations in multiple languages and operates on both clearnet and Tor. This article reveals the top 10 dark web markets dominating in 2025, their unique characteristics, and the critical implications for enterprise cybersecurity. But according to Meta, no more than 1 in 2,000 views on Facebook is of content that violates its restricted goods policy.
This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article. The datasets generated by the survey research and analyzed in this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. The majority of respondents only filled out the questionnaire in part, which can be explained by the length of the survey and its complex, repetitive situational questions.
