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Operation Dark HunTOR resulted in police from around the world arresting 150 individuals suspected of buying and selling illegal goods. This was one of the biggest-ever dark web stings according to Europol.
According to France 24, Dark HunTOR was a police operation that included complementary actions in Australia, Bulgaria, France, UK, US, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands.
Europol said that many “high value” targets were arrested. 65 of these were detained in the US alone, while 47 were arrested in Germany, and 24 in Britain.
Among the police seizures were $31 million in cash and cryptocurrencies. Drugs and guns were also seized.
Of the dark marketplaces that were shut down, Italian police closed down the “DeepSea” and “Berlusconi” sites, while German police took down the “DarkMarket” back in January. This particular market was used for the sale of drugs and stolen credit card data among other illegal products.
DarkMarket was discovered as German prosecutors were investigating the web-hosting service Cyberbunker, which was actually located in an ex NATO bunker in SW Germany.
Since that time, the European Cybercrime Centre EC3, which comes under Europol, has been evaluating intelligence in order to identify their targets.
Jean-Philippe Lecouffe, Europol deputy director of operations, said:
“The point of operations such as this is to put criminals operating on the dark web on notice (that) the law enforcement community has the means and global partnerships to unmask them and hold them accountable for their illegal activities,”
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