AlphaBay, the Largest Online ‘Dark Market,’ Shut Down

The Justice Department announced the seizure of the largest criminal marketplace on the Internet, AlphaBay, which operated for over two years on the dark web and was used to sell deadly illegal drugs, stolen and fraudulent identification documents and access devices, counterfeit goods, malware and other computer hacking tools, firearms, and toxic chemicals throughout the world. The international operation to seize AlphaBay’s infrastructure was led by the United States and involved cooperation and efforts by law enforcement authorities in Thailand, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France, as well as the European law enforcement agency Europol.

“The Alphbay founder is Alexander Cazes originally from Canada, was arrested at his home in Bangkok on July 5. Mr. Cazes committed suicide in his jail cell shortly after he was arrested, the authorities said on Thursday. He was 25 years old.

Officials said they had found Mr. Cazes because he posted his personal email address, Pimp_Alex_91@hotmail.com, in some early messages from AlphaBay.
Even before AlphaBay went down, it had several large competitors. In the last few weeks, a site known as Dream Market has emerged as the leading player. On Thursday, Dream Market had 57,000 listings for drugs and 4,000 listings for opioids.” NY Times

An unedited transcript(link is external) compiled from live captioning is available while this video is being close captioned.

Image and Source: Justice.gov website