2 Leading Online Black Markets Are Shut Down by Authorities
But on Thursday, the Dutch national police announced
that they had taken control of Hansa Market in June and had been operating the site since then, monitoring the vendors and customers and gathering identifying details on those involved in the 50,000 transactions that took place.
Some 10,000 foreign addresses of Hansa Market buyers were passed on to Europol.”
Hansa Market was open earlier this week and announced that it was planning to ban fentanyl from the site.
AlphaBay and Hansa Market were successors to the first
and most famous market operating on the so-called dark net, Silk Road, which the authorities took down in October 2013.
By NATHANIEL POPPER and REBECCA R. RUIZJULY 20, 2017
The American and European authorities said on Thursday
that they had shut down two of the largest online black markets, AlphaBay and Hansa Market, and arrested their operators.
AlphaBay, the largest so-called dark net market, was taken down in early July at the same time the authorities
arrested the reported founder of the site, Alexandre Cazes, a Canadian man who was living in Bangkok.
Hansa Market had about 1,800 vendors selling drugs of all sorts, the Dutch authorities said on Thursday.