European authorities have been arrested through a coordinated international operation of DarkMarket, which is said to be the world's largest market in the dark web.
The market was considered one of the most popular havens for criminals looking to sell drugs, malware, stolen credit card and SIM card data, among others.
German law enforcement authorities arrested an Australian man believed to be the operator of the illegal site and confiscated 20 hosting servers, putting an end to what has become a hotbed of illegal activity.
Before it closed, DarkMarket hosted nearly 500,000 users and facilitated more than 320,000 transactions, according to Europol.
The dark web market trades everything from drugs, counterfeit money to credit card details and stolen malware.
According to Europol's estimate, the site traded the equivalent of 140 million euros of today's funds, in a combination of Bitcoin and Monero.
European authorities plan to use DarkMarket servers confiscated from Ukraine and Moldova to investigate buyers and sellers who used the site in criminal transactions.
DarkMarket was revealed as part of a larger investigation into web hosting company Cyberbunker, which in the past provided servers for Both The Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks
The DarkMarket case is a valuable starting point for future investigations into other illegal sites.
The past several years have seen authorities tighten their grip on dark internet sites, such as DarkMarket.
Wall Street, another dark web market, faced a similar end in 2020 during a European investigation, and other sites, such as Empire Market, disappeared altogether, either because of fear of prosecution or operators reducing their losses and taking money.
Many large sites, such as Alphabay or The Silk Road, have disappeared because government agencies are becoming more aggressive in chasing these markets and more able to understand how they work.
"The shared commitment across the law enforcement community around the world and the coordinated approach of law enforcement agencies have once again proven their effectiveness, and the scale of the process demonstrates the global commitment to addressing the use of the dark web as a means of committing crime," Europol said in a statement on this week's operation.
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