German police have shut down what they claim to be the country’s largest illegal dark web marketplace and arrested a suspected administrator of the site. Europol compared the platform’s endurance, scale and reputation to other notorious and now-defunct drug marketplaces such as Dream Market and Silk Road. The coordinated takedown brought an end to a prolific drug marketplace that accumulated more than $290 million in transaction volume since operations began in 2020. Operation SpecTor built up on the takedown of the marketplace’s criminal infrastructure by German authorities in 2021. It offers a wide range of illicit goods, including illegal drugs, counterfeit items, fake IDs, passports, and software keys. The news comes during a turbulent time for darknet markets with the most prominent sites closing down in recent months, either voluntarily or as a result of police activity.
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“Our actions send a message today to criminals that you cannot hide on the darknet or their forums, and you cannot hide in Russia or anywhere else in the world.” Numerous U.S. agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, the IRS Criminal Investigation and others were involved in the operation, they said. “The seizures carried out today were preceded by extensive investigations that have been conducted…since August 2021 and in which several US authorities were involved,” the German federal police announced. German authorities said they seized Hydra’s server infrastructure and about $25 million in bitcoin on Tuesday. With exception of alphabay, silk road, and Darkmarket the rest have been all Germans. The continent-wide effort — dubbed Operation Deep Sentinel — follows a wave of cybercrime crackdowns across the globe, marking one of the most high-volume periods of law enforcement action against cybercrime in rapid succession.
They used “free data dumps” and emotional marketing to build trust before vanishing—an enduring lesson in the risks of social engineering. BidenCash and other exit-scam markets such as Torzon and Kingdom Market collapsed between 2022 and 2024. Authorities seized €7.8 million and arrested operators in Germany, Spain, Sweden, Romania, the Netherlands, and the US Europol leads takedown of Archetyp. Privacy-focused operators are shifting to Monero due to its default anonymity, compared to Bitcoin’s transparent ledger Darknet markets see BTC inflow drop to $2B.
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These hidden markets promise anonymity, but in practice, users often slip up. These markets use cryptocurrencies and encryption to hide, but law enforcement’s growing technical skills have repeatedly broken them open. As is the case with most dark web marketplaces, buyers used cryptocurrency to pay for these goods and services. I just find this interesting like does anyone know why Germany is so popular for dark web markets? National police in Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain and Sweden deployed a combined 300 officers between June 11 and June 13 to target Archetyp Market’s administrator, moderators, vendors and technical infrastructure. The website for Archetyp Market was seized and its alleged administrator, a 30-year-old German national, was arrested in Barcelona, Spain.
Modern darknet investigations rely on a mix of technology and teamwork. Some in the underground forums were fooled by fake posts from a released admin, a likely law enforcement ruse to sow confusion. According to Europol, the operation froze about €7.8 million in assets. Active from 2020 until June 2025, it amassed 600,000 registered users and 17,000+ listings. Archetyp was Europe’s longest running and bloodiest market in the 2020s.
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This marks a significant blow against one of the few darknet markets permitting the sale of dangerous substances such as fentanyl. Last week, law enforcement agencies conducted operations across several European countries including Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain. 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. The marketplace had more than 600,000 users with a total transaction volume of at least €250 million ($289 million).
The marketplace had operated for five years, and Europol said it took “years of intensive investigative work,” including tracing financial flows, to take down the site and its alleged operators. Europol has shuttered one of the longest-running dark web marketplaces, Archetyp Market, but blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs says the marketplaces are highly adaptive to shutdowns. A Chainalysis report out last week claimed that such marketplaces saw profits rebound slightly last year from 2022, after generating roughly $1.7bn in cryptocurrency-based revenues. “The police seized numerous pieces of evidence, especially cell phones, IT devices and data carriers,” the notice continued.
- Launched in 2020, Archetyp was Europe’s longest-serving drug market at the time of its takedown last week, and authorities today confirmed a number of key arrests.
- One darknet vendor who advertised on WSM is currently serving a 12-year federal prison sentence after being convicted in the Western District of Wisconsin for distributing a fentanyl analogue resulting in the overdose death of a Florida resident who ordered a nasal spray laced with the powerful opioid from the vendor.
- Unlike overt seizures, Dream’s shutdown was an exit by administrators, a pattern sometimes seen when market owners bail out.
- “It gave us all goosebumps” says Sebastian Zwiebel, as he describes the moment his team shut down Hydra, the world’s largest darknet marketplace.
- “The seizures carried out today were preceded by extensive investigations that have been conducted…since August 2021 and in which several US authorities were involved,” the German federal police announced.
- BidenCash and other exit-scam markets such as Torzon and Kingdom Market collapsed between 2022 and 2024.
It supported 5,400 vendors and about 1.15 million customers worldwide. Unlike overt seizures, Dream’s shutdown was an exit by administrators, a pattern sometimes seen when market owners bail out. Dozens of Dream Market drug dealers were nabbed e.g. a U.S. heroin syndicate. This announcement coincided with Operation SaboTor, a multinational effort targeting opioid vendors.
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In practice, authorities combine blockchain forensics, metadata analysis and international raids to dismantle these sites. By 2025, agencies also use dark web search Engines and honeypots to infiltrate markets. Europol said police operations took place last week across Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain and Sweden to dismantle the dark web Archetyp Market. The 29-year-old arrested on Monday is accused of acting as technical administrator of Crimenetwork and has been charged with operating a criminal trading platform and dealing in narcotics. Servers used to support the Crimenetwork marketplace were also taken down, according to the BKA.
In a significant intelligence coup, the BKA secured access to comprehensive user databases and transaction records, potentially enabling further investigations and arrests. Shortly after the FBI posted a takedown notice on the AlphV/Blackcat website, the hackers replaced it with their own message claiming they had “unseized” the page and brought it back under their control. They also received a 3% commission for processing the sales of illegal goods via the platform.
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The operation comes several months after German police took down a notorious dark web marketplace known as Kingdom Market. Three more people were arrested in connection with Crimemarket elsewhere in the country, as police go after users of the site as well as its administrators. German police claim to have disrupted the country’s most popular underground market for drugs and cybercrime. Beyond arrests and seizures of servers, it’s important for governments to warn people about the dangers of buying illegal drugs online, said FBI Deputy Director Paul M. Abbate. The pills sold on darknet marketplaces are often counterfeit and laced with the powerful opioid, Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
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Many sites specialize in selling illegal goods that are not readily available on the public internet. The police actions involved about 300 officers. The market’s takedown came after years of effort from Germany, Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Sweden and the United States. German police raided the CyberBunker’s headquarters in September 2019 in Traben-Trarbach, a small town close to the Luxembourg border. “The stored data will give investigators new leaders to further investigate moderators, sellers and buyers,” Europol said in a statement Tuesday. The CyberBunker hosting service was based in former North Atlantic Treaty Organization bunkers in Holland and then Germany, helping controversial sites avoid police legal enforcement from military-style basements.
As part of this joint action codenamed ‘Operation Deep Sentinel’ (led by German police and supported by Europol and Eurojust), investigators in the Netherlands took down the marketplace’s infrastructure, while a 30-year-old German national suspected of being Archetyp Market’s administrator was apprehended in Barcelona, Spain. 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. No, black market websites operate illegally and pose high risks of scams, fraud, and law enforcement action.
Hydra Market was a Russian-language marketplace that had operated via the Tor network since at least 2015 and was known for extensive drug trafficking, according to German authorities. Archetyp Market attracted more than 600,000 users with over 17,000 listings facilitating high volumes of illicit drug sales, including fentanyl, cocaine, MDMA, amphetamines and synthetic opioids. Operation SpecTor follows up on other EU law enforcement actions against illicit dark web markets, such as DisrupTor (2020); Dark HunTor (2021) and Hydra (2022). Altogether €50.8 million in cash and virtual currencies, 850 kg of drugs, and 117 firearms were seized.
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”). It is not clear which German authorities were behind the seizure, although Europol described it as happening alongside the seizure of the Hydra marketplace’s infrastructure. In recent months, German authorities have also taken down Kingdom Market and Crimemarket, both of which boasted of thousands of users and offered a wide array of money laundering and cybercrime services.
This marketplace specializes in a variety of illegal products, including drugs, counterfeit documents, and hacking tools. ‘This operation led by the German authorities marks the end of a criminal service that enabled the anonymous trade in high volumes of illicit drugs, including cocaine, MDMA, amphetamines, and synthetic opioids’, the statement said. “The platform’s endurance, scale and reputation within the criminal community place it alongside now-defunct darknet markets such as Dream Market and Silk Road, both notorious for their role in facilitating online drug trafficking,” Europol said. The arrest and prosecution of the criminals who allegedly ran this darknet marketplace is a great example of our partnership with law enforcement authorities in Europe, with the support of Europol, and demonstrates what we can do when we stand together.”
