The shutdown of DarkMarket in January 2021 was billed by triumphant investigators as the world’s largest illegal marketplace bust. More than 2,400 drug dealers and half a million customers used the dark web site to do business, pushing 4,600 Bitcoin and 12,800 Monero through the marketplace’s servers, amounts of crypto then worth in excess of €140 million. Until it was forcibly closed, DarkMarket racked up north of 320,000 transactions.

The Germany-led operation that brought its trading days to a close saw a pronounced shift in police tactics, from targeting marketplace administrators to going after vendors directly. It saw Europol coordinating with the DEA, FBI, IRS, and the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) to shut the site and hunt down its sellers.

That’s how James Edmans, 32, from De

See Full Page