A police anti-drug operation against a portal of the “dark web”, the hidden part of the internet, arrested 288 suspects and seized the equivalent of almost 56 million dollars in several countries in Europe, the United States and Brazil, Europol reported.
The operation, called “SpecTor”, in which nine countries participated, managed to seize 850 kg of drugs, 117 firearms and 50.8 million euros (USD 55.9 million) in euros and virtual currencies, said the Agency for the European Union for Police Cooperation (Europol).
“In an operation coordinated by Europol (…), security forces seized the illegal Monopoly Market and arrested 288 suspected of being involved in buying or selling drugs” on the hidden internet, a statement from the entity, based in The Hague.
“Several of these suspects were considered high value targets,” Europol said.
The raid followed the leads evidenced in 2021, with the seizure in Germany of the “criminal infrastructure” of the platform.
“Europol compiled intelligence packages based on the trove of evidence delivered by the German authorities,” the European entity detailed.
“These target packages, created from the cross-reference and analysis of collected data and evidence, served as the basis for hundreds of investigations nationwide,” the agency added.
The highest number of arrests took place in the United States, where 153 people were detained, followed by the United Kingdom (55), Germany (52) and the Netherlands (10).
There were also arrests in Austria (9), France (5), Switzerland (2), Poland (1) and Brazil (1).
More than 258 kilos of amphetamines, 43 kilos of cocaine, 43 kilos of MDMA, the raw material for ecstasy pills, and more than ten kilos of LSD and ecstasy were seized, Europol said.
“Criminals may think they are anonymous on the dark web, but they are not,” Nan van de Coevering of the Dutch investigative services was quoted as saying in a statement.
“In response to this operation, we have published a list on the ‘dark web’ with all the pseudonyms of the detained vendors who have ceased their illegal practices,” it added.
The “dark web” is a parallel version of the internet that guarantees the anonymity of users –and which also has legal sites that seek, for example, to avoid censorship in certain countries– has been the object of several international operations in recent years.
In April 2022, the Hydra Market platform was dismantled, a hidden internet site that was considered “the illegal market with the highest turnover in the world” with close to 1,230 million euros in sales in 2020.
This new operation “sends a strong message to the criminals of the ‘dark web'”, said the executive director of Europol, Catherine de Bolle, quoted in the statement.
“When a ‘dark web’ site is shut down, we obviously see a disruption for a while” in criminal activity, but the networks “can be reconstituted, there are more people,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland warned in a statement. Press conference.
In 2021, 150 people who bought or sold coins on the ‘dark web’ were arrested in a planet-wide operation called “DarkHunTOR” and in 2020 another operation, called “DisrupTor”, allowed the arrest of 179 sellers of illicit goods.
The world‘s largest online marketplace for stolen identities and passwords of more than two million people, the Genesis platform, was taken down last month.
This operation, which resulted in 119 arrests, was articulated by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Dutch police, with the participation of 17 countries.