The closure of AlphaBay follows in the footsteps of Silk Road, the Darkweb marketplace where users could buy all kinds of illegal and illicit goods, and is taken down by international law enforcement.
AlphaBay Market — one of the largest Dark Web marketplaces for drugs, guns, and other illegal goods — that mysteriously went dark earlier this month without any explanation from its admins has reportedly been shut down by the international authorities.
AlphaBay, aka "the new Silk Road", had filled the void left by the shutdown of the original darkweb black market that provided a space where users could use Bitcoin to purchase drugs, weapons and other illegal goods. The popularity of the original Silk Road was largely due to the anonymity and convenience the online marketplace provided to its users.
After the disappearance of Silk Road, AlphaBay emerged in 2014 and became a leader among dark web marketplaces for
selling illicit goods from drugs to stolen credit card numbers, exploits, and malware.
Earlier this year the AlphaBay was hacked and 200, 000 private unencrypted messages were stolen from several users. Furthermore, similar sights such as Evolution have used a "rip-and-run" strategy vanishing overnight and taking bitcoin stored on user accounts along with them.
Now [2016] it looks as if Alphabay, the latest reigning top market with over 50,000 listings of "drugs and chemicals" for sale and 12,000 "fraud" products like stolen online accounts and credit cards, may be cashing in on users' misplaced trust, too. An endless stream of complaints on Reddit's "darknetmarkets" page and Alphabay's own Tor-protected user forum accuse the site of intermittently stealing users' bitcoins and deflecting the blame to weak password or a phishing schemes. (Alphabay's moderators didn't respond to WIRED's request for comment on the string of thefts.)
"There are numerous reports of AlphaBay funds going missing and shady behavior from AlphaBay administration," writes one popular online drug vendor known by the name GrandWizardsLair, explaining his decision to no longer sell on the site. "Should have listened when people said AlphaBay is a scam site," wrote another user whose bitcoins disappeared. "An expensive lesson learned."
Alexandre Cazes
According to reports, several coordinated international raids were conducted in the United States, Canada and Thailand. The alleged creator and founder of AlphaBay, Alexander Cazes, was apprehended by authorities on July 5th in Bangkok.
The 26-year-old Canadian citizen was awaiting extradition to the United States when a guard found him hanged in his jail cell on Wednesday, the Chiang Rai Times confirms. Cazes is believed to have hanged himself using a towel.
Cazes had been living in Thailand for nearly 8 years. During his arrest, authorities also seized "four Lamborghini cars and three houses worth about 400 million baht ($11.7 million) in total."
[The Hacker News]
The Silk Road
When the FBI shutdown the Silk Road in 2013 it also arrested the "supposed" creator and founder Ross Ulbricht who was accused of hiring hired assassins to eliminate his rivals. Ulbricht is said to have used the username The Dread Pirate Roberts (from the classic children's movie the Princess Bride), and written ideological anarcho-capitalist manifestos and messages to the website users and supporters. Many believe that Ulbricht was not the creator of the Silk Road, and like the character from the movie, the title was handed down from user to user leading many to believe that their may have been multiple Dread Pirate Roberts involved in the creation and maintenance of the website.
Ultimately, the judge in the case of the Silk Road and Ross Ulbricht handed down a severe sentence of life in prison without parole..
On Friday, a judge sentenced the founder of the world's largest online drug marketplace to life in prison without parole, ruling that his website was not harm-reducing but "terribly destructive to our social fabric."
He was convicted [sic] of trafficking drugs on the internet, narcotics-trafficking conspiracy, running a continuing criminal enterprise, computer hacking, and money laundering.
In handing down her sentence, Judge Katherine B. Forrest refuted the defense's characterization of the website as a "harm-reducing" "economic experiment" that simply got out of hand.
"Silk Road was a planned, comprehensive, and deliberate scheme that posed a serious danger to public health," she said.
At Ulbricht's sentencing, parents of overdose victims spoke of how their sons had used Silk Road to access illicit drugs that lead to the deaths of their children.
About 33 million dollars worth of Bitcoin was seized in the shutdown of the Silk Road.
