Wall Street Market

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Wall Street Market
Darknet market for illegal products
languages English
user 1.15 million customer accounts
On-line (currently offline since May 2, 2019)

Wall Street Market was the second largest darknet market and could only be reached as a hidden service via the Tor network . The website was seized by Europol and the Federal Criminal Police Office and shut down on May 2, 2019. It is said to have been hosted in an underground data center, the CyberBunker , in the former Mont Royal barracks of the Bundeswehr .

content

Among other things, drugs , spied data , forged documents and malware with a sales volume of around 40 million euros were traded on the website . Guns and child pornography were not offered. According to the Federal Criminal Police Office, 63,000 sales offers, 5,400 salespeople and 1.15 million customer accounts were last seen. The goods were paid for with the crypto currencies Bitcoin and Monero . The website generated most of its sales in the United States.

history

The operators of the website already operated the darknet marketplace German Plaza Market in 2016, raised around 1.2 million euros and invested the proceeds in the new platform. Here the investigative authorities were already observing the Bitcoin history. The operators also had problems with the virtual private network encryption, which made it easier for the investigators to gain access to their identity.

Since March 2019, Europol , the Dutch police, the FBI and the BKA have intensified investigations against the site. After the operators put the site into maintenance mode on April 23, 2019 and initiated an exit scam to divert the funds to themselves and go underground, they were exposed. On April 23 and 24, 2019, the operators of the website were arrested and a house search was carried out . Data carriers and other important evidence were confiscated. The alleged perpetrators are:

The website generated around one million euros in sales, of which the operators received between 2 and 6% commission , according to law enforcement agencies .

There were also two arrests of major drug dealers in the United States. On May 2, the authorities posted a banner on the website that read, “The platform and the criminal content has been seized”. By the end of June, cryptocurrency worth 16 million euros had been seized. The three suspects are in custody and face imprisonment of up to 15 years, among other things for aiding and abetting drug trafficking , according to the spokesman for the Central Office for Combating Internet Crime (ZIT). The investigators and domestic politicians of the CDU , SPD and Greens praised the international cooperation of the security authorities.

documentation

On May 19, 2020, the funk YouTube channel STRG F published a documentation on the site and its operators.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sonja Peteranderl, DER SPIEGEL: Darknet raid: arrest of "Wall Street Market" operators - DER SPIEGEL - Netzwelt. Retrieved June 3, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b heise online: Wall Street Market: BKA and FBI excavate illegal Darknet marketplace. Retrieved July 29, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b BKA and FBI excavate Darknet marketplace. tagesschau.de, accessed on July 29, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b c "Wall Street Market": BKA secures millions in the event of a strike against Darknet platform. waz.de, June 26, 2019, accessed on July 29, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Max Muth: The mistakes of the Darknet bosses . In: sueddeutsche.de . 2019, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed on July 29, 2019]).
  6. ^ Sonja Peteranderl: Darknet raid: Investigators arrest operators of "Wall Street Market" . In: Spiegel Online . May 3, 2019 ( spiegel.de [accessed July 29, 2019]).
  7. ↑ Darknet platform picked up: What is known about "Wall Street Market" and its operators. RP ONLINE, accessed July 29, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Drugs, Phishing, Malware: How Herman X. Conquered the Darknet | STRG_F. In: YouTube. Retrieved May 19, 2020 .