German law enforcement agencies announced the dismantling of a darknet platform called “Darknet” kingdom market The company specializes in selling drugs and malware to “tens of thousands of users.”
The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) said the exercise began on December 16, 2023, and was a collaboration between the US, Swiss, Moldovan and Ukrainian authorities.
It is said that since at least March 2021, Kingdom Market has been accessible through TOR and the Invisible Internet Project (I2P) anonymous network, trafficking illegal narcotics as well as advertising malware, criminal services and forged documents.
Before the English platform was removed, as many as 42,000 products were sold through hundreds of seller accounts, 3,600 of which were from Germany.
Transactions on Kingdom Market are facilitated through cryptocurrency payments such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero and Zcash, with website operators charging a 3% commission for processing sales of illegal goods.
“The operator of ‘Kingdom Market’ is suspected of operating a criminal trading platform online and illegally trafficking drugs,” BKA said, adding that an investigation into the seized server infrastructure was ongoing.
In addition to being detained, a person associated with Kingdom Market operations has been charged in the United States with identity theft and money laundering. Alan Bill, who goes by the aliases Vend0r and KingdomOfficial, is described as a Slovak national.
Days earlier, another coordinated law enforcement operation dismantled the BlackCat ransomware’s darknet infrastructure, prompting the group to respond to the seizure of its data leak site by seizing control of the page, claiming they had “seized” this page.
