For people who use opioids, it also increases their risk of overdose when they resume use with lower tolerance. While the purity of coke and heroin that she bought varied somewhat, it was much easier to avoid fentanyl. She also found that the psychedelics were virtually always of high quality. As far as financial recourse for victims, some banks and insurance companies have provided payouts and will include those funds as damages in lawsuits against Genesis Market cybercriminals.
Trump Pardons Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht
Based on our observations from analysis on dark web data using Lunar, we’ve identified the top 7 marketplaces on the dark web in 2025. We developed Lunar to monitor the deep and dark web, including dark web marketplace sites. Others are looking for stolen data, hacking services, or even banned books and political content. HSI New York leads and directs all operational and administrative activities of the El Dorado Task Force (EDTF).
Dark Net Drug Markets Kept Alive By Great Customer Service
Brian Dumps, the biggest overall fraud shop for the year, also appears to have suffered a disruption as its revenue fell almost to zero in October, though it’s unclear exactly why. Keeping to the trend witnessed in 2023, Russian-language darknet marketplaces continue to be responsible for the vast majority of revenue generated, contributing over 97% to the overall volume of illicit drug sales (up more than 1% from 2023) in bitcoin and TRON. The law enforcement response to the rise of Silk Road and its brethren about a decade ago has mainly focused on trying to shut down the marketplaces and prosecute their operators.
Dark Web Statistics From Region To Region
- This analysis is part of the GI-TOC’s series of articles delving into the results of the Global Organized Crime Index.
- Despite the many challenges faced by darknet marketplaces over the course of 2024, these platforms have nevertheless seen a slight increase of income compared to 2023, generating more than USD 1.7 billion.
- TRM Labs has reported a change toward encrypted chat applications, social media platforms, and individual vendor shops.
- When one goes down, two more emerge with new ideas, better technology, and greater difficulty to track.
- Illicit drug markets use communication technology, cryptocurrency, blockchain, and money laundering to avoid legal repercussions 2.
- Marie had never purchased drugs in the conventional way—and still hasn’t.
Given the tooling’s ability to capture new password updates, the perpetrators could easily maintain control over his accounts, and they opened bank accounts in his name and had his physical mail sent to an address where they could receive it. In 2019, the FBI started its investigation into Genesis Market and enlisted other government agencies and law enforcement organizations across the world, working towards the market’s closure on April 4, 2023. As part of the investigation, the Dutch National Police took the lead on cybercrime prevention, and Van Well shared his insight on the sophistication of the fraud shop’s operation. Fentanyl and fentanyl-laced drugs also arrive in the United States through Latin America based cartels.
The Rise Of Cryptocurrency In The Synthetic Drug Trade
Given the illicit nature of darknet markets, it’s unsurprising that vendors and users would seek to leave a market that has suffered a data breach. Launched in 2015, the Russian marketplace, Hydra Market, was known for its trade in drugs among other things. The Hydra Market grew to become one of the biggest marketplaces on the darknet, accounting for around 80% of darknet activity and amassing 19,000 seller accounts and 17 million customers. In terms of drug sales, Hydra Market became the largest narcotic market among the former countries of the USSR. Hydra Market met a similar demise to the Silk Road when it was shut down by German police in April 2022. Brian usually buys his illegal drugs from “traditional dealers,” as he put it.
Darknet Market
No matter where criminals hide, we will find them, dismantle their operations, and bring them to justice. This operation was about protecting innocent people from predatory criminals who profit from violence, addiction, and fear. Our commitment is unwavering,” said Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale, United States Postal Inspection Service. Though Mega Darknet Market typically serves a Russian customer base, the drug revenue shown in the chart above likely came from customers based in Europe.
Links To NCBI Databases
Social media companies are under growing pressure to eradicate drug dealing on their platforms, says Ashly Fuller, a PhD candidate at University College London researching the sale and advertisement of illegal drugs to young people on social media. Data released by social media companies shows that millions of pieces of drug-related content are already taken down every year. (Facebook and Instagram took action against 9.3 million pieces of drug-related content last year, while Snapchat says it did so in 241,227 cases in the second half of 2023.) But these companies’ actions are sometimes indiscriminate. The accounts of organizations promoting drug harm reduction and social media personalities who post content about drugs and psychedelics, but who do not sell them, are being caught in the crossfire of efforts to get a grip on the issue. New and potentially more vulnerable population segments can be reached by exploitative drug dealers as they begin to sell on social platforms and the number of drug consumers in the US and around the world grows. The US Drug Enforcement Administration has warned that because dealers are “no longer confined to street corners and the dark web,” social media users’ posts and inboxes can be peppered by dealers seeking to purvey these addictive and, when misused, harmful drugs.
The surface web encompasses the parts of the web that are accessible via search engines, such as google. Being able to order drugs for self-medication so easily and discreetly, Marie continued, also kept misguided friends from trying to force her to quit. Contrary to popular belief, making a loved one become abstinent (even if you can) won’t cure the underlying issues that may have led them to use in the first place.
As for drug markets serving Western customers, ASAP Market held a 25.0% share, followed by Mega and Incognito. Cybercrime enablement represents flows from ransomware, stolen funds, malware, or fraud shops to darknet markets. Usually, it takes a few weeks for buyers to transfer to alternative or new sites. When cops shut that site, they knew users would migrate to any service they could – and many fed to Hansa market, which the cops had seized and allowed to continue operating so they could capture user data.
Based on TRM Labs, a number of reasons have made Russian-language platforms successful. The report identifies the lower threat of action from Russian law enforcement as one of the most important factors enabling these marketplaces to be run with a degree of autonomy. This lower legal pressure has enabled the ecosystem to expand primarily with just four Russian-language darknet marketplaces going offline from about 20 active platforms in 2024. According to a new report by blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs, this is a 1% increase from 2023. The data shows that Bitcoin and Tron remain the cryptocurrencies of choice for these markets.
Regulatory bodies, law enforcement agencies, and private sector partners must continue to adapt, innovate, and cooperate to outpace increasingly sophisticated threat actors. Central to this effort is the use of advanced blockchain intelligence tools, which provide critical insights for tracing illicit transactions, identifying threat actors, and supporting enforcement actions. The progress made in disrupting illicit networks demonstrates the impact of collective action, but sustained vigilance and adaptability — empowered by cutting-edge blockchain analytics — will be essential to securing the crypto ecosystem in the years ahead. TRM has observed that these manufacturers have adapted their practices in response to intensified law enforcement efforts.
- Bayonet/GraveSac (the coordinated takedown of the AlphaBay and Hansa Market darknet marketplaces by US and European law enforcement in 2017), which left the Western DNM ecosystem reeling.
- The study uses the internet or darknet data for public health research, providing a unique insight into the scale and nature of drug sales.
- These platforms allow vendors to reach customers who are less technologically savvy, whilst also mitigating against market turbulence caused by darknet market exit scams or law enforcement takedowns.
- In both cases, this activity is coming from cybercriminal or semi-criminal elements, which are likely driven not just by their personal interest, but the direction from a third-party.
- The surface web encompasses the parts of the web that are accessible via search engines, such as google.
- In the second stage, we collected 31 variables from official sources to compare officially collected data with darknet data about amounts and types of selling drugs in every 85 regions of Russia.
The drugs are delivered in the post, so vendor and customer never have to meet in person. Regarding profits, darknet vendors do not have to limit their trading to face-to-face interactions, and can instead sell drugs to a potentially worldwide customer base. Notably, the growing tensions between Solaris and WayWay have also been heating up as claims of possible money theft from Solaris appear the same month (December 2022), which later have been disputed by Solaris Administrators and interpreted as “geopolitical” and “fake”. According to them, their marketplace is completely safe and they spent significant financial means to maintain the infrastructure, but competitors and other malicious parties attempted to abuse their reputation. Same time, Solaris has also announced a significant upgrade to their payment system and blocked all payouts for 2 days around the same time which may confirm some activities behind the scenes, likely related to improvements of security of the marketplace.
