Screenshot via ZDNet
The operator of the DeepDotWeb platform has been sentenced to more than eight years in prison.
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US this week Ministry of Justice (DoJ) said Tal Prihar’s sentence of 97 months was based on conspiracy to launder money, a crime Prihar pleaded guilty to in March last year.
DeepDotWeb (DDW), owned by Prihar and co-defendant Michael Phan, began operations in 2013, providing a platform for dark web news and marketplace links, redirecting visitors to their .onion addresses — sites that are inaccessible through standard search engines clear network.
This website caught law enforcement in 2019.
According to U.S. prosecutors, the two defendants made substantial profits by advertising the links through kickbacks offered by underground marketplaces. The goods and services offered include hacking tools, firearms, drugs, and stolen data collection.
Prihar and Phan received 8,155 bitcoins (BTC) — they were worth around $8.4 million at the time, although they are now much higher — and the funds were then transferred to cryptocurrency wallets and held in fake shell companies Traditional bank account.
Prihal, April 2021 plead guilty his role in DDW and agreed to forfeit $8,414,173.
His accomplice is currently in Israel, and extradition proceedings are ongoing.
The investigation into DDW involves organizations including the FBI’s Pittsburgh office, French authorities, Europol, the US Internal Revenue Service, German law enforcement, the Israeli National Police and the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA).
In other darknet news this week, law enforcement seizes and shuts down Canadian Headquarters, a large marketplace that facilitates the purchase and sale of spam services, phishing kits, data dumps of stolen credentials, and access control to infected machines. Four individuals allegedly linked to the market were also fined.
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