Technology Education Blog

German Federal police with the help of Europol
and FBI taken down the world’s second largest
illegal online dark web market Wall Street Market
and also arrested two of the leading suppliers.
The Wall Street market was the second largest dark
web market that has over 1 150 000 and 5 400
vendors. The dark web market is reachable via the
Tor network.
Most recently, more than 63 000 sales offers were
placed on the online marketplace and the payments
handled in the marketplace via cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin and Monero to maintain anonymity.
The administrators of the marketplace have received
commission payments of 2 to 6 percent of the
illegal sales value, Europol says in press release .
Three suspects were arrested by German authorities
and they have “seized over €550 000 in cash,
alongside cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Monero in
6-digit amounts, several vehicles and other
evidence, such as computers and data storage.”
Another dark web market was shut down by
Silkkitie, also known as Valhalla Marketplace shut
down earlier this year, some of the vendors from
Silkkitie moved to Wall Street Market and German
authorities brought their illegal activities to an end.

The Silkkitie is one of the oldest site known for
trading illicit goods, it has been active from since
2013. Earlier this year Finnish authorities seized
entire web server and contents of the market place.
“These two investigations show the importance of
law enforcement cooperation at an international
level and demonstrate that illegal activity on the
dark web is not as anonymous as criminals may
think,” said Europol’s Executive Director,
Catherine De Bolle.
“Europol has established a dedicated Dark Web
Team to work together with EU partners and law
enforcement across the globe to reduce the size of
this underground illegal economy.”