In a simultaneous press conference issued by the Dutch police and US Attorney General Jeff Sessions we learned that the Dark Web market places Alphabay and Hansa market have been seized and shut down by international cooperating authorities.
As it turned out Hansa Market was already under control of the Dutch police for 27 days. After the take-down by Canadian, US, and Thai authorities of Alphabay a lot of their customers moved to Hansa Market, which was at that time already under control of the Dutch police. They even had to put a temporary stop on new customers for a while, there were just too many. This was all part of an international plan to get insight in the trafficking of drugs and guns. The Hansa Market website software had been changed so it would reveal details about the identity of these customers.
This lead to the arrest of 4 major drug dealers in the Netherlands alone. Also, police departments in other countries have been tipped off about dealers in their countries, but no details were available on how many arrests were made due to these tips. The Dutch police stipulated that the criminal activities they were involved in during this time were allowed as part of the infiltration of a criminal organization.
US Attorney general Jeff Sessions warned criminals they are not as safe on the Dark Web as they like to think: “You cannot hide… we will find you.”
Hansa Market was also a market place for malware and stolen data, but as of now, we have no details of any arrests or discoveries were made in these fields.
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