In the end, it was all a coincidence, Cazes walked past, and there was no confrontation. The Thai police, under the supervision of the feds, eventually arrested him a few days later in a well-choreographed operation. A week later, Cazes then died by apparent suicidein a Bangkok jail. About a year later, AlphaBay was launched, growing quickly in size and allowing users to browse goods via the anonymity service Tor and to purchase them with bitcoin currency. Cazes, 25, apparently took his life a week later while in Thai custody, the Justice Department said.
Our analysts will continue to follow this market’s presence and reputation on the darknet, and provide further updates as this story unfolds. Furthermore, darknet users rarely draw so much attention to themselves. DeSnake has broken this mold with their dramatic return to the public eye that included interviews with the media and identity verification through a potentially compromised PGP key.
However, after Cazes was held for exactly a week at the Narcotics Suppression Bureau in Bangkok, reports of his apparent suicide surfaced. Bangkok vowed to conduct an autopsy, while US authorities had no interest in verifying the legitimacy of the suspect’s death. Monero appears to have lost its darknet market integrations, and very well may have fallen victim to an exit scam. Largest mixing service BitMixer shuts down in a matter of days, leaving users both puzzled and curious. Announcements motivated by ethical reasons to stop offering the service despite millions of dollars revenue.
Accessing Dark Web
DeSnake says his security practices—both the ones he’s applying within AlphaBay and on a personal level—go far beyond those of his predecessor, Cazes, who went by the online handle Alpha02. Cazes was caught, in part, through Bitcoin blockchain analysis that confirmed his role as AlphaBay’s boss, a trick that would be far more difficult, if not impossible, with Monero. DeSnake argues that new safeguards like these will make AlphaBay that much harder to remove from the dark web this time around. “I had given many ‘holy grails’ of anonymity, but he chose to use only certain things while he branded other methods/ways as ‘overkill,’” DeSnake writes, in his seemingly foreign-inflected and occasionally misspelled English. “The biggest reason I am returning is to make the AlphaBay name be remembered as more than the marketplace which got busted and the founder made out to have committed suicide,” DeSnake writes. Cazes was found dead of an apparent suicide in a Thai jail cell a week after his arrest; like many in the dark web community, DeSnake believes Cazes was murdered in prison.
The U.S. Department of Justice has won the right to confiscate money and items Alexandre Cazes enjoyed from his dark web e-commerce empire’s riches. Data is only for use by academic researchers, as evidenced by a .edu (or a known non-US academic domain) email address, and a .edu (or a known non-US academic domain) webpage describing your research and publications. You need to send a brief description of the project you want to use this data for. The whereabouts of another high-profile AlphaBay moderator, called Alpha02, are unknown.
In July of 2017, a global law enforcement sting known as Operation Bayonet took down AlphaBay’s sprawling narcotics-and-cybercrime bazaar, seizing the site’s central server in Lithuania and arresting its creator, Alexandre Cazes, outside his home in Bangkok. Yet in August of last year, AlphaBay’s number-two administrator and security specialist, publicly known only as DeSnake, suddenly reappeared, announcing AlphaBay’s resurrection in a new and improved form. Now, 10 months later, thanks in part to a tumult of takedowns and the mysterious disappearances of competing dark web markets, DeSnake’s reincarnated AlphaBay is now well on its way to its former heights atop the digital underworld. CommercialYesRegistrationRequiredUsers400,000+LaunchedSeptember 2014Current statusOfflineAlphaBay is a darknet market operating both as an onion service on the Tor network and as an I2P node on I2P.
How To Get On Dark Web On Iphone
In early July, days before AlphaBay servers were seized, Europol hosted a command post staffed with representatives from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Department of Justice, along with its own members. The command post was the central hub for information exchange during the AlphaBay operation. So far, AlphaBay has managed to withstand DDoS attacks, criticism, and skepticism and is well positioned to be a safe haven for increasingly displaced marketplace vendors. Platform Platform Overview Learn more about Flashpoint’s products and services. Cazes is arrested in Bangkok at his dwelling at Phutthamonthon Sai 3 Road in Thawi Watthana district which is searched by the Royal Thai Police, with the help of the FBI and DEA. Cazes’ statements about the goal of the site — “launched in September 2014 and its goal is to become the largest eBay-style underworld marketplace” — helped to legally establish intent.
“The usernames and passwords of thousands of buyers and sellers of illicit commodities have been identified and are subject to more follow-up investigation by Europol and our partner agencies,” he said. Cazes, 25, apparently took his life a week later while in Thai custody, the justice department said. He faced charges relating to narcotics distribution, identity theft, money laundering and related crimes.
Cocorico Market Darknet
In 2016, an angry user of AlphaBay known as “Kinger” stated that alpha02 had left the market in late 2015, sold his stake to DeSnake, and DeSnake was supposedly acting as admin for its final two years. Kinger’s ominous threat suggested they knew his real life identity and his citizenship was actually Dutch. When authorities carried out the warrant and arrest in his apartment in Bangkok, his laptop was left unencrypted and the admin account for the market and server logged in.
- These marketplaces are a part of a long list of active markets that are gaining momentum, audiences, and illegal activity every day.
- Ohio resident Larry Dean Harmon, 36, has been charged with laundering more than $300 million in bitcoin for darknet marketplace AlphaBay.
- In connection with the AlphaBay investigation, on July 5, police in Thailand arrested Canadian citizen Alexandre Cazes, 26, operating on an arrest warrant issued June 30 at the request of U.S. authorities, the Bangkok Post reported.
- Andrei Barysevich, a director at Recorded Future Inc., and specialist in dark web matters tells the Journal that it “was the biggest marketplace on the Dark Web,” taking in a reported $600,000 to $800,000 per day.
- The site recently come under scrutiny because many of its vendors sell synthetic opioids, like fentanyl, which play a central role in the nationwide overdose epidemic.
DarkOwl could not confirm any prior darknet experience from the moderators DeSnake has installed as Staff on the market and forum. The DDoS protection and bot detection measures are excessive for a brand new marketplace. While navigating the domain manually, DarkOwl analysts regularly had to reset their Tor circuit and refresh their identity to simply view the vendor listings.
Dark web marketplaces AlphaBay and Hansa shut down
From heightened risks to increased regulations, senior leaders at all levels are pressured to improve their organizations’ risk management capabilities. Schwartz is an award-winning journalist with two decades of experience in magazines, newspapers and electronic media. He has covered the information security and privacy sector throughout his career. Cazes was arrested “with a view toward extradition to face federal criminal charges in the United States,” Melissa Sweeney, a spokeswoman with the U.S.
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday it had shut down the dark web marketplace AlphaBay, working with international partners to knock offline the site accused of allowing a global trade in drugs, firearms, computer hacking tools and other illicit goods. 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. Nicolas Christin, a dark-web-focused computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, verified DeSnake’s PGP key against a copy found in his own archive of messages. But that key, he says, could be in the control of law enforcement agencies, or DeSnake himself could have become a law enforcement cooperator.