The term “stealth” refers to the method by which the product is disguised to look like a genuine delivery item, particularly with regard to x-ray machines used by the postal service. Some dealers will send drugs or contraband concealed within DVD cases, the battery compartments of torches, or even the spines of books in an effort to conceal them. Over its five years of activity, the marketplace amassed over 612,000 users with a total transaction volume of over €250 million (approximately $289 million) in Monero cryptocurrency transactions. Police said they’d seized the Crimemarket domain address and are currently studying seized data, documents and evidence, which will be making some users of the marketplace somewhat nervous. The police said late last week that Crimemarket had over 180,000 registered users and could be accessed via both the dark web and freely via the publicly accessible surface web (“clearnet”). When Archetyp went fully offline in June 2025, it triggered the same recovery reflexes seen after past collapses.
- 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.
- The Nemesis Market was launched in 2021 as a new marketplace to purchase illegal drugs and narcotics, stolen data and credit cards, and various cybercrime services related to ransomware, phishing, and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
- One vender, “Ladyskywalker,” operated on several darknet marketplaces, where the individual advertised and sold opioids such as fentanyl, oxycodone and hydrocodone.
- The change in tactics netted a record number of arrests for the operation, beating the 150 arrested following the takedown of DarkMarket, and 179 following the takedown of Wall Street Market.
- 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.
- Behrouz Parsarad (Parsarad), residing in Iran, was the sole administrator of Nemesis.
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The Register asked the authorities involved for more details on these measures, and they clarified this meant arrests only. The Versus Project is being developed for and by the community, and the buyers are being given as many opportunities as possible to participate in the expansion of the market. There are Benzos, Cannabis, Ketamine, MDMA/XTC, Psychedelics, and Stimulants available for purchase in the store. The MDMA/XTC category has the most options available, while the other categories only provide fundamental choices.
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In May, German police shut down Wall Street Market, a thriving marketplace that had more than 63,000 deals and 5,400 sellers, with over 1 million users worldwide. It was a resource-heavy operation, involving hundreds of separate investigations by five EU and US agencies. A few weeks before, Dream – the longest running and largest market – was closed under mysterious circumstances. Europol said Archetyp had been one of the few darknet markets that allowed the sale of fentanyl and other highly potent synthetic opioids. The German police have seized infrastructure for the darknet Nemesis Market cybercrime marketplace in Germany and Lithuania, disrupting the site’s operation.
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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. The site’s infrastructure, hosted in the Netherlands, was taken offline during the operation. Authorities arrested the alleged administrator, a 30-year-old German national, in Barcelona, while enforcement actions in Germany and Sweden targeted one of the site’s moderators and six of its highest-volume vendors. The digital underworld has witnessed a major blow with the recent dismantling of Archetyp Market, one of the longest-operating darknet drug markets. Since its launch in May 2020, Archetyp grew into a sprawling platform facilitating massive illegal drug sales across multiple countries.
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“We got some hints through monitoring darknet activity from US officials. So we started in July or August last year to dig deeper and to investigate this field,” he says. Mr Zwiebel says the operation to close it down began with a tip-off which pointed to the possibility that the website infrastructure might be hosted in Germany. The site was written in Russian, with sellers located in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and surrounding countries.
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The features that are provided fulfill the requirements for a positive shopping experience on the dark web. The growth that has been experienced is pretty good, taking into consideration that Revolution has been around for almost an entire year. Both stealth and packaging are essential aspects of delivery, and they frequently have an effect on how customers rate a vendor.
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. Volatility has by now become a routine process used by vendors, users and administrators alike after the fall of each dark web market. What may look like disruption from the outside is, in practice, a recovery playbook now hardwired into the design of online drug markets. Archetyp may be gone, but the features that drove its success are already being carried forward by others. Code named Deep Sentinel, the operation was the latest in a series of strikes by European authorities against high-volume dark web markets.
Archetyp had more than 17,000 listings at the time of its takedown from around 3,200 registered vendors, and was one of the few marketplaces of its kind that allowed the sale of fentanyl. The scale of its operation puts it on a similar level to the dark web’s previous marketplace monopolizers such as Dream and Silk Road. Alongside Europol, law enforcement agencies from Germany, Australia, Denmark, Moldova, Ukraine, the United Kingdom (represented by the National Crime Agency), and the United States (represented by the DEA, FBI, and IRS) took part in the operation. An Australian national was detained by German authorities over the weekend on suspicion of being the person responsible for operating a marketplace located close to the border between Germany and Denmark.
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A moderator and six prominent vendors were arrested simultaneously in other countries, and officers seized assets worth about $9 million. WASHINGTON (AP) — Law enforcement officials in the U.S. and Europe have arrested 150 people and seized more than $31 million in an international drug trafficking investigation stemming from sales on the darknet, the Justice Department said Tuesday. The Archetyp Market takedown comes at a time of continued growth and transformation in the digital drug trade.
- “A total of at least 320,000 transactions were carried out via the marketplace, with more than 4,650 Bitcoin and 12,800 Monero – two of the most common cryptocurrencies – changing hands,” Oldenburg authorities added.
- For as long as the law curtails a substance that the people really want, the darknet markets will be there to facilitate the delivery of these things.
- In this capacity, Parsarad established Nemesis and held full control over the marketplace and its virtual currency wallets.
- In 2011 he started the Darknet marketplace “Silk Road” under the alias “Dread Pirate Robert,” and in the two years until it was shut down, deals worth around $1.2 billion were concluded via Silk Road.
- But their expensive campaigns are no more effective than a traditional shakedown on a bunch of dealers on one street corner in one city.
Prosecutors in Frankfurt described the “Hydra Market” platform as the world’s biggest illegal darknet marketplace. BERLIN (AP) — German investigators on Tuesday shut down a Russian-language darknet marketplace that they say specialized in drug dealing, seizing bitcoin worth 23 million euros ($25.3 million). After a failed attempt at a culinary apprenticeship in 2013, the then-19-year-old teamed up with a darknet vendor who went by the name of RedBull supported by another named DummesSchwein to establish one Germany’s most lucrative darknet marketplaces. McDonald recruited and hired accomplices to help package and ship the narcotics they sold on the darknet. McDonald purchased bulk quantities of fentanyl and cocaine and then directed others to complete hundreds of drug sales involving large quantities of both fentanyl and cocaine. The longest-standing dark web drug market worth £200million has been dismantled following a years-long investigation with its alleged mastermind arrested in Barcelona.
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Transactions are carried out with the help of a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin and dark wallets, which protect both the buyer and the seller. Europol’s statement about the scale of Archetyp Market’s operations and the coordinated international takedown is confirmed by multiple reputable sources. The €250 million transaction volume and the seizure details align with official reports. The arrests and infrastructure seizures substantiate the effectiveness of Operation Deep Sentinel. However, the darknet’s elusive nature means some data on users and exact sales volumes could be underreported.
Unlike in the Hydra takedown, however, law enforcement did not replace Monopoly Market’s darknet site with a splash page. 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. The arrests are connected to a 10-month investigation between federal law enforcement officials in the U.S. and Europol in Europe.
