One of the biggest markets of the Darknet, AlphaBay, well known for accepting several criptomonedas as payment method, has been offline since yesterday, so users have not been able to make withdrawals from the platform. This fact, coupled with a large transaction of unknown origin found in the blockchain the same day, which reaches the amount of 1,479,039 BTC (almost 4 million dollars), and the lack of response of the web staff, has ignited the Alarms on a possible exit scam.
Users at Reditt have been asking questions and lodging their complaints about the lack of operation of the site, and since there has not been an official announcement by AlphaBay so far, several possibilities are being considered. The first is a potential scam, that is, the escape of administrators with all the money deposited by users. Something unfortunately common in exchange houses of criptomonedas and in the markets of the Darknet, something already tried Evolution and Sheep Marketplace, which retired with about 40,000 BTC belonging to its users.
A POLICE ATTACK
The second theory before the event is that the site was put off-line by Australian authorities, after a vendor nicknamed 'The Medicare Machine' was discovered to be offering the National Medicare Cards for $ 30 in bitcoins each. These cards are issued by the government for individuals or families, and work to receive reimbursements of medical expenses within the Australian health system. They contain the personal data of the beneficiaries, including names, surnames and dates of birth, so that they can function both to make fraud to the health system and to usurp the identity of users. Seventy-five of these cards had apparently been sold through an unspecified Darknet portal, and the authorities set out to find out.
