That site, the authorities said, was the successor to the original Silk Road website and identical in operation.Īs recently as Oct. Bharara’s office announced charges against a California man, Blake Benthall, 26, who was arrested the previous day in San Francisco and charged with narcotics trafficking, money laundering and hacking conspiracies in connection with his operation of Silk Road 2.0. “As illegal activity online becomes more prevalent,” he added, “criminals can no longer expect that they can hide in the shadows of the ‘dark web.’ ” The international effort was “the largest law enforcement action to date against criminal websites operating on the Tor network,” said Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, whose office announced the operation on Friday. The investigation had been underway for months as the illegal online market “mushroomed,” Mr. Quid’s Forum and Cannabis Road Markets, according to Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency.Īcross Europe and the United States, at least 17 sellers were arrested, and law enforcement authorities seized Bitcoins valued at $1 million, along with gold, cash and drugs, according to Troels Oerting, who heads Europol’s cybercrime center. The investigation, nicknamed Operation Onymous, was aimed chiefly at sellers, and deactivated upward of 50 such websites, including Silk Road 2.0 and Blue Sky, as well as Mr. It was that thriving online black market that American and international authorities announced on Friday had been the target of a series of raids and arrests in 16 countries, which included the seizure of dozens of websites that matched anonymous sellers and buyers for illicit goods and services. The sites typically operated on the Tor network, which is designed to conceal the I.P.
These websites, known as the “dark web,” cannot be found by Google or even by typing in a web address. In the digital marketplace, they operated as a secret underground with names like Blue Sky and Silk Road 2.0 where anonymous buyers could purchase drugs, stolen credit cards and weapons, or even hire a hit man.
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