Operation RapTOR includes law enforcement actions taken by JCODE member agencies, to include ICE HSI; the DEA; FBI; FDA-OCI; IRS-CI; and USPIS; in addition to foreign partners listed below. Credible reporting from the referenced agencies, in addition to contributions from ATF; Army CID; CBP; Department of Treasury’s FinCEN and Office of Foreign Assets Control; and NCIS enabled domestic law enforcement actions in support of Operation RapTOR. Local, state, and other federal agencies also contributed to investigations through task force participation and regional partnerships. Abacus Market has emerged as one of the most reputable and widely used dark-web marketplaces in 2025. Founded in early 2023, shortly after major law enforcement operations shut down several competing platforms, Abacus quickly filled the void by prioritizing reliability, advanced security, and user anonymity. From June 11 to 13, the agency said, a series of coordinated law enforcement actions targeting the platform’s administrator, moderators, key vendors and technical infrastructure took place across Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain and Sweden.
Disturbing Items That Were Discovered On Dark Web Marketplace Shut Down By Police
- There is, of course, a search option available, allowing you to quickly and easily locate a particular item in the catalog.
- It has a dual-wallet system, which means users can keep their funds in a secure wallet or a spending wallet.
- With more than 17,000 product listings, the platform served as a hub for narcotics trafficking, including the sale of cocaine, MDMA, amphetamines, and particularly dangerous synthetic opioids such as fentanyl — making it one of the few major markets to openly permit such listings.
- In the case of Nemesis Market — another platform covered in TRM’s reporting — US authorities sanctioned an Iranian national linked to more than USD two million in cryptocurrency transactions involving narcotics, stolen data, and illicit services.
- The complaint affidavit identifies several cases that have been filed in the United States against WSM vendors.
The marketplace is well-known for its bug bounty programs and robust security mechanisms, including mandatory 2FA. Archetyp was more than just the next online drug market to fall, having absorbed much of the vendor traffic displaced by earlier market closures. Following the collapse of illegal dark web marketplace Monopoly Market in late 2023, which was widely suspected to have been the result of law enforcement action, the European dark web community entered a brief period of disarray.
What People Are Saying
A fourth defendant linked to Wall Street Market was charged yesterday in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. While some of these markets were shuttered by law enforcement agencies – some took the easy way out with exit scams. Here are some of the now-defunct dark web markets that were notorious for cybercrime. The underground market was founded in 2021 and grew to reach over 150,000 users and more than 1,100 seller accounts registered worldwide. Nemesis was used not just to sell narcotics, but also fraudulently obtained data and goods, as well as ransomware, phishing, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and other cybercrime services.
Furthermore, deterring drug users from the darknet could lead to them buying drugs on the streets, which could be more dangerous from a health perspective. Drugs on the darknet have a better reputation regarding cleanliness (Bancroft, 2017; Munksgaard et al., 2022), and some form of harm reduction also derives from the communities formed around darknet markets (Aldridge et al., 2018; Szigeti et al., 2023). White House Market is another popular darknet market, known for its strict security measures. It only accepts Monero as a payment method, ensuring complete anonymity for its users. White House Market also has a built-in PGP encryption system, which means that all communications between buyers and vendors are encrypted, ensuring maximum privacy. The marketplace was offline last week, when Dread and its sister services were under heavy DDoS and inaccessible.
Launched in 2020, Cypher Marketplace sells fraudulent documents, stolen credit cards, fake IDs, and malware. Its emphasis on user anonymity and document forgery makes it a core tool for identity fraud. Apart from the dark web markets that are operating online today, some raided platforms influenced many markets. Some dark web marketplaces even host content that’s not just illegal but extremely harmful, so it’s really important to understand the risks before diving in. It’s been a constant back-and-forth between cybercriminals and law enforcement, with each new site trying to be smarter and more secure than the last. “The operators of the Darknet website are particularly suspected of commercially operating criminal trading platforms on the Internet and of committing crimes against the Narcotics Act,” Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) said in a press release.
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When Archetyp, one of the largest and oldest dark web drug markets, was dismantled in June 2025, the authorities framed it as a ‘severe blow’ to European organized crime. But as with previous takedowns, although the platform disappeared, its users quickly dispersed and regrouped across rival markets and forums. Open-source intelligence gathered in the aftermath shows how the dark web infrastructure responded and what this reveals about its resilience. A major part of the darknet consists of the so-called black markets which serve the purpose of trading in almost exclusively illegal goods (trading in narcotic drugs, weapons, counterfeit money, data, “crime-as-a-service”). The website launched in 2015 selling drugs, hacked materials, forged documents and illegal digital services such as Bitcoin-mixing – which cyber-criminals use to launder stolen or extorted digital coins. Shortly after the German action was announced, the US Treasury issued sanctions against Hydra “in a coordinated international effort to disrupt proliferation of malicious cybercrime services, dangerous drugs, and other illegal offerings available through the Russia-based site.”
🛡️ Wie Axis Intelligence Die Cybersicherheit Stärkt
The market’s 17 million known customers were also known to buy and sell forged documents and stolen credit cards, they said. The drug marketplace’s infrastructure was seized in the Netherlands, and police in Germany and Sweden confiscated $9 million from a moderator and six of the platform’s top vendors. 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. Since some users purchase on the darknet because they do not want to risk a personal meeting with dealers, darknet markets extend the range of potential users (Pergolizzi et al., 2017). While these users might be deterred from purchasing drugs, the effectiveness of influencing the risk perception of actual darknet market customers who may be addicted drug users is questionable.
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Mixing services allowed customers, for a fee, to send bitcoin to designated recipients in a manner that was designed to conceal the source or owner of the bitcoin. Hydra’s money laundering features were so in-demand that some users would set up shell vendor accounts for the express purpose of running money through Hydra’s bitcoin wallets as a laundering technique. The takedown of Archetyp Market is a clear signal that law enforcement agencies, supported by advanced blockchain intelligence, can disrupt even the most entrenched illicit platforms. But the resilience and evolution of these networks underscore the need for continued cross-border collaboration, technical innovation, and real-time monitoring to stay ahead of the next generation of darknet threats. Archetyp Market facilitated a reported minimum of 250 million euros (about $290 million) in drug transactions over five years, with over 600,000 users, 3,200 vendors, and 17,000 listings. Authorities seized assets valued at 7.8 million euros, including cryptocurrency and luxury goods, and deployed around 300 officers across multiple countries during the operation.
Police Shut Down Long-running Dark Web Drug Market
In the summer of 2017, Dream market, the second-biggest at that time, had just 48,000 deals. All in all, the number of weapons that are offered on the platforms of the darknet is still significantly lower compared to the number of illegal narcotic drugs or counterfeit money, for instance. A relatively high number of fraudsters who only pretend to offer firearms or ammunition is also characteristic of the darknet. Law enforcement authorities across Europe have dismantled ‘Archetyp Market’, the most enduring dark web marketplace, following a large-scale operation involving six countries, supported by Europol and Eurojust, according to a press release today.
- 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.
- 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.
- Both stealth and packaging are essential aspects of delivery, and they frequently have an effect on how customers rate a vendor.
- The site had processed more than 320,000 transactions, with some $170 million USD worth of Bitcoin and Monero cryptocurrencies having been exchanged.
- This suggests that either more customers bought from darknet markets in 2019, or that old customers are making more purchases.
Hacking vendors commonly offered to illegally access online accounts of the buyer’s choosing. In this way, buyers could select their victims and hire professional hackers to gain access to the victims’ communications and take over the victims’ accounts. According to the indictment, vendors on Hydra could create accounts on the site to advertise their illegal products, and buyers could create accounts to view and purchase the vendors’ products. Hydra vendors offered a variety of illicit drugs for sale, including cocaine, methamphetamine, LSD, heroin and other opioids. The vendors openly advertised their drugs on Hydra, typically including photographs and a description of the controlled substance. Buyers rated the sellers and their products on a five-star rating system, and the vendors’ ratings and reviews were prominently displayed on the Hydra site.
Dark Web Marketplaces
The data from this week’s seizures will be the basis for further investigations against sellers and users who used the platform, German authorities said. The seizure is the result of parallel investigations and close coordination between German, American and Lithuanian law enforcement authorities, including the FBI, DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) and IRS-CI (Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation) since October 2022. Before taking down CrimeMarket, German authorities worked alongside international agencies to bust the prolific LockBit ransomware gang. After taking down LockBit’s website, the criminals regrouped to launch a series of devastating attacks on critical infrastructure in various countries around the world, including the US, Canada, and Britain. Platform shutdowns can disrupt logistics, lead to arrests and seize goods, but they do not break apart the dark web’s recovery architecture. Just as Archetyp filled the void left by the dismantling of other online drug markets that existed before it, its successor may already be taking shape.
Vendor Voice
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. For years, Nemesis Market operated on the dark web, accessible through the Tor browser.
In Europe, Germany is among the top three biggest markets for drugs, next to the UK and the Netherlands, and they have a lot of darknet markets operating in the country. They shut down previous record-setters like AlphaBay, Silk Road and most recently DarkMarket. We wouldn’t count on the seizure preventing other dark web shops from taking Hydra’s place, then. It could disrupt operations for a while, though, and might serve as a reminder that even the larger digital black markets can fold with little warning. Some are looking for illegal stuff they can’t buy elsewhere, like drugs or counterfeit documents. The platform was active on the darknet, a part of the internet accessible only through specialized tools that provide more anonymity.
When Archetyp went fully offline in June 2025, it triggered the same recovery reflexes seen after past collapses. Within hours, vendors were resurfacing on forums, scrambling to reconnect with buyers, showing proof of their identities and reassuring business continued as usual. In parallel, many began migrating to alternative markets, initially Abacus and TorZon Market, which became early landing zones.
