The United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has announced it will impose sanctions on darknet market Hydra and virtual currency exchange Garantex. In a Tuesday announcement, the Treasury Department said it had worked with the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigations, Drug Enforcement Administration, Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation, and Homeland Security Investigations to sanction the Russia-based darknet marketplace as well as Garantex. The move from the U.S. government agencies came the same day the German Federal Criminal Police announced it had shut down Hydra’s servers in Germany and seized more than $25 million …

While the value of cryptocurrencies has varied wildly in the last year, this has not diminished crypto’s attractiveness to criminals. Many of them are moving their illegal activities underground and outside the view of law enforcement. Because of the public nature of most blockchains, however, this rapid movement shouldn’t be a major concern to law enforcement agencies. With the right tools and training, following the proceeds of crypto-enabled crime is actually not as difficult as it may seem. However, intelligence agencies must have a cryptocurrency investigation plan that includes the right tools to lawfully collect digital evidence and the properly …

U.S. authorities have arrested the alleged mastermind behind a multi-million darknet-based BTC mixing service, Bitcoin Fog, after analyzing 10 years of blockchain data. Authorities have issued a chilling warning to other users of illegal blockchain services: Anything you do today may come back to haunt you as “this activity is on this ledger forever” and ever-more sophisticated analytics technology can track down crimes committed years earlier. For approximately a decade, Bitcoin Fog has enabled users to conceal the origin and destination of its users’ crypto assets. However, the Internal Revenue Service is charging Russian-Swedish citizen, Roman Sterlingov, with laundering more …

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has announced charges against California resident James Roland Jones in the first-ever enforcement action from the commission to target securities fraud on the darknet. According to the March 18 complaint, Jones is accused of accessing a darknet-based insider trading forum in late 2016 to seek material non-public information, or MNPI, on which to trade securities. He was unsuccessful in obtaining any useful MNPI from the forum, but in the spring of 2017, Jones allegedly began selling insider stock tips himself under the false pretext he was privy to MNPI obtained both from the forum …

Revenue from crypto-related crime dropped by more than half in 2020 according to Chainalysis’ annual report on the subject. Cybercriminals netted around $5 billion less than the $10 billion plus they got away with in 2019, representing a 53% fall. Transactions involving illicit funds have decreased even more rapidly than the total volume of those funds, falling from 2.1% of all transactions analyzed in 2019 down to just 0.34% last year. Among the eight categories of transactions deemed “illicit” by Chainalysis, the dollar amount of crypto taken in by scams decreased the most, by 71% to $2.6B, largely due to …

The administrator of dark.fail, a website providing verified links to darknet markets, claims that exchanges are unfairly closing accounts donating Bitcoin to the service after implementing a Chainalysis transaction flagging system. The admin alleged in a tweet that two donors of Bitcoin to the website had their accounts blocked by exchanges that recently implemented Chainalysis’ new KYT — or Know Your Transaction — blockchain monitoring service. WARNING: Two of my donors report that their exchanges blocked their accounts after they donated Bitcoin to me. I am a journalist! I do not commit crimes. Last year I voiced strong opposition to …

According to The Daily Beast, outgoing United States President Donald Trump is considering granting clemency to Ross Ulbricht — the founder and operator of the pioneering darknet market, Silk Road. Ulbricht was arrested in 2013 and received two life sentences without parole for non-violent offenses in 2015. The anonymous sources relied on in the report claim that the White House counsel’s office has been reviewing documents related to Ulbricht’s case, and that the president has been made aware of the situation. Two sources claim that Trump has privately expressed sympathy for Ulbricht and has considered his name for the next …

An anonymous crypto user has just moved 69,370 Bitcoin from an address associated with the Silk Road darknet market that more recently has become a popular hacking target. According to a Nov. 3 report from crypto intelligence firm CipherTrace, the recent movement involving two transactions adding up to 69,370 Bitcoin (BTC) — or more than $960 million at the time of publication — originated from an address connected with the Silk Road marketplace shut down in 2013. The crypto user first sent 1 BTC — likely as a test transaction — before moving the bulk of the coins. CipherTrace speculated …

A report published by blockchain forensics firm CipherTrace has detailed significant disruptions to the clandestine darknet marketplace sector following a spate of exit scams during recent months. Despite opportunities for new marketplaces to capture the users of the now-defunct platforms, CipherTrace notes the absence of a single platform dominating Western volume. It estimates that the Russian-focussed Hydra market is now the largest worldwide. Hydra is estimated to have generated more than $1.2 billion in revenue between June 2019 and July 2020 despite exclusively servicing the Eastern European region. While darknet marketplaces have historically been dominated by a small number of …

While the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is unknown, it has infected more than 30 million people, with almost 1 million confirmed to have died from it as it continues to spread across the world. The highly contagious virus has the ability to survive up to three weeks in frozen food supplies of meat and fish, according to a study. Related: Illicit crypto transactions are getting more attention from the government The United States — the worst-hit country by sheer numbers — is now facing two intersecting health crises: The ongoing opioid overdose epidemic and the coronavirus pandemic with …

Blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis has found that darknet markets exert a disproportionate presence in Eastern Europe’s crypto sector. In an excerpt from Chainalysis’ 2020 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report, the firm asserts that Eastern Europe is responsible for “more global darknet market activity than any other region,” with the anonymous free market Hydra comprising the region’s sixth-largest crypto service. Regional shares of global darknet market transfer volume: Chainalysis The report estimates that Hydra generated more than $1.2 billion in crypto revenue between June 2019 and July 2020. The platform is among the world’s largest darknet marketplaces despite solely servicing the Eastern …

One of the men responsible for moderating content on the now defunct AlphaBay darknet market will be in jail until 2031. According to a Sept. 1 statement from the U.S. Department of Justice, 26-year-old Bryan Connor Herrell was sentenced to 11 years in prison for conspiring to engage in a racketeer-influenced corrupt organization, for his role as a moderator on AlphaBay. The platform was one of the largest online marketplaces for drugs as well as guns, credit card data, and other illegal items, paid for with cryptocurrency. “This sentence serves as further proof that criminals cannot hide behind technology to …