According to a source speaking with the Bangkok Post, police seized four Lamborghinis and about $11.7 million in Thai currency from Cazes when they arrested him. The genuine AlphaBay hidden service uses the address pwoah7foa6au2pul.onion. A hidden service’s address is derived from the public key used to authenticate the connection, so it is difficult to convincingly impersonate the site without having access to the owner’s key pair. However, the fraudster could easily have computed a partial match using tools such as scallion; for example, Netcraft generated the lookalike address pwoah7f5ivq74fmp.onion within minutes.

Cazes, 25, apparently took his life a week later while in Thai custody, the Justice Department said. AlphaBay and Hansa Market were two of the top three criminal marketplaces on the dark web, Europol chief Rob Wainwright said at the press conference. “It was like seeing a ghost,” one of the agents remembers thinking, as some of his colleagues panicked.

What are the AlphaBay community functions?

Authorities also simultaneously executed search warrants for the market’s server hardware located in Quebec, Canada. In cooperation with the FBI, the Royal Thai Police took steps to organize the extradition of the 24-year old Canadian administrator back to the United States. 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. 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.

Businesses have had limited time to become acquainted with AlphaBay 2.0 as of yet (DeSnake says it is the same market, not “2.0”). There were no sales made by the suppliers indicated or any other sources that we were aware of. There looks to have been a significant amount of time and work put into the new features, some of which are absolutely novel.

If you want a ‘wallet-less’/non-custodial marketplace then simply transfer only amount which you will be paying into your AlphaBay XMR wallet. The whole idea of ‘wallet-less’ marketplaces which became popular after our raids, is naive and pure marketing bullshit, your coins always go into an address controlled by the market for the duration of that transaction. It is up to the user to find the balance between convenience and security. Multisig monero will be integrated once it is more stable and mainstream, our tests have shown it is not ‘there’ just yet. We have a heavy focus on I2P because we believe it is the future and every DNM user should learn how to use it. To elaborate further, Tor has been neglecting much needed upgrades to how hidden services work for a very long time and it is not only me saying that.

AlphaBay historically had a vocal and persistence presence on Darknet Market Avengers forum which unfortunately, has been offline for several weeks. There are no new threads mentioning AlphaBay’s return on The Hub. Other listings – such as doxxing tools, gold, invites to invite-only Genesis marketplace, Binance accounts, password databases, and more.

Access To Dark Web

When AlphaBay first reappeared, Gray and other dark web analysts and users expressed suspicion that DeSnake might be compromised by law enforcement. As part of the site’s relaunch, multiple new features have been advertised and new rules announced. Notable among new features are AlphaGuard , an automatic system to resolve disputes between buyers and sellers, exclusive use of Monero wallets, and the offering of I2P mirrors.

The investigation into AlphaBay revealed that numerous vendors sold fentanyl and heroin, and there have been multiple overdose deaths across the country attributed to purchases on the site. A man suspected of running AlphaBay was found dead in a Thai prison last week; Dutch police say they have infiltrated another market called Hansa. Law enforcement has long been criticized for playing catch up with criminals. Acting FBI Director Andy McCabe acknowledged the criticism but said that was “the nature of criminal work.”

Alphabay Market URL

The action permitted surveillance of criminal activities on the marketplace before it was shut down in July. AlphaBay’s servers were seized with the help of authorities in Thailand, Lithuania, Canada, Britain and France. The operation included the arrest of suspected AlphaBay founder Alexandre Cazes on 5 July, a Canadian citizen detained on behalf of the US in Thailand.

• Complete disregard for human life by Law Enforcement, disregard for someone who was presumed innocent unless proven guilty, disregard for their duties as police.
• For your end, after pursuing all lines for recovering the money, it will be about trying to improve procedures to make sure that it won’t happen again.
• With the Matrix, Ghostbusters, and even Sex and the City making their way back to the screens, who could expect that AlphaBay Market’s revival would be the most surprising reboot of the year.
• The family is affected when someone has a problem, yes, but most of the time there is no problem.

As recently as last year, a California Court sentenced Brian Herrell, a Colorado native and AlphaBay moderator who operated under the moniker “Botah” to 11 years in prison for racketeering and for his connections to AlphaBay. Upon his initial arrest, reports suggested he faced up to 20 years for his involvement in the marketplace. 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.

From other online sources it would seem that police ran the site for about 50 days. On average, 1000 orders were made per day in response to some 40,000 ads. And even more interestingly the payments made were directly sent to a government controlled wallet in the tune of $2mn . This was no small operation and definitely illegal under many jurisdictions (but, again, I don’t know of Dutch laws). The only people who are interested in drug users having higher quality drugs are drug users and their enablers.

Monero transactions are more private as its transactions are hidden for anyone looking on the block explorer with only a Monero address. Explore hostnames visited by users of the Netcraft extensions. The stolen credentials are then submitted to a PHP script, which immediately redirects the victim to the genuine AlphaBay hidden service. Netcraft is an innovative internet services company based in Bath with an additional office in London. In April 2020, Netcraft won a Double Queen’s Award for Enterprise. They’re established,” said Ian Gray, senior director of research and analysis at Flashpoint.

How Do People Access The Dark Web

Criminologist David Decary-Hetu noted this event as notable for being the first example of criminal services being sold over a darkmarket. He said, “All the cases I have heard of so far turned out to be law enforcement trying to find people of interest,” making this case unique in his experience to that point. The sites operated on the Tor network, which helps users browse the internet anonymously.