Category Archives: Valhalla Market

DeepDotWeb boss pleads guilty to laundering millions

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The administrator of a dark web marketplace that served as a gateway for purchasing heroin, firearms and hacking tools pleaded guilty to money laundering charges on Wednesday. The Justice Department said that Tal Prihar administered DeepDotWeb, where he received $8.4 million in kickbacks from dark web marketplaces for providing prospective customers with direct links to those sites, which sold illegal goods but weren’t easily found via search engines. When law enforcement indicted Prihar and an alleged co-conspirator in 2019, authorities hailed it as “the single most significant law enforcement disruption of the Darknet to date.” French law enforcement captured Prihar, an Israeli native who had lived in Brazil. Israeli law enforcement arrested the alleged co-owner of the site, Michael Phan, who handled day-to-day operations. U.S. authorities previously seized DeepDotWeb. “For six years, DeepDotWeb was a gateway to facilitate the illegal purchase of items to include dangerous drugs, weapons, and malicious […]

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Operator of bitcoin ‘mixers’ that served dark web markets faces $60 million FinCEN penalty

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The operator of two “mixer” or “tumbler” services that exchanged cryptocurrency for users on “the darkest spaces of the internet” is facing $60 million in civil penalties from the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The decision against Larry Dean Harmon, who operated the services known as Helix from 2014-17 and Coin Ninja from 2017-20, is the first of its kind from FinCEN against a bitcoin mixer. The agency said he failed to register both as money services businesses and violated federal obligations “to develop, implement, and maintain an anti-money laundering compliance program; and to meet all applicable reporting and recordkeeping requirements.” More specifically, Harmon failed to file suspicious activity reports for transactions within dark web markets, as required by the Bank Secrecy Act. “Mr. Harmon operated Helix as a bitcoin mixer, or tumbler, and advertised its services in the darkest spaces of the internet as a way for […]

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Dark web marketplaces aren’t the hacker hotbeds they used to be

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Wannabe cybercriminals no longer are relying on dark web marketplaces to buy and sell their hacking tools, it seems. The selection and prices of malicious software offerings on well known dark web markets has remained mostly unchanged since 2017, according to findings published Tuesday by the risk intelligence firm Flashpoint. The mostly stagnant prices on these forums, which are most frequently used to buy and sell narcotics, is the latest proof that, even as cybercriminals continue to harass victims, skilled hackers are moving to more private channels to trade the most valuable techniques, suggested Ian Gray, Flashpoint’s director of analysis and research. The quality of the tools, like commodity malware and distributed denial-of-service rental services, also has remained steady, even as defenses have improved. “There’s a lack of innovation we’re seeing in the kinds of goods and on the marketplaces,” Gray said. “It might be an indication they’re looking at […]

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Fall of AlphaBay raises ‘a different balance of power’ on the dark web

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For criminal entrepreneurs, the fall of the dark web’s most profitable black market raises questions about which service will be the next illegal-marketplace titan or the next one whose operator lands behind bars. After three years of hosting a multimillion-dollar illegal business, AlphaBay ceased to exist earlier this month in the face of an international law enforcement operation.  Alexandre Cazes, a Canadian citizen who allegedly was one of the site’s operators, was found hanged in his Thailand prison cell Wednesday as extradition to the United States was being prepared. This comes just a few months after Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted and sentenced to life for running the dark web marketplace Silk Road, lost his appeal in a New York courtroom. AlphaBay sold a wide range of illicit goods including drugs, stolen data and hacking tools. At one point, AlphaBay operated as the criminal answer to Amazon.com’s hugely successful hold on the legal […]

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