The U.S. Department of Justice dealt a heavy blow to the dark web drug trade, seizing over $200 million in illicit assets.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced last Thursday the launch of a global drug enforcement operation code-named "Operation Falcon," which is the largest international law enforcement action to date against drug trafficking on the dark web.

The operation received cooperation from 10 countries, including the UK, Germany, South Korea, and Brazil, making it the largest operation in the history of the United States Department of Justice's Opioid and Dark Web Joint Task Force (JCODE).

A total of 270 people were arrested in this law enforcement operation, and more than 200 million dollars in cash and digital assets were seized, including 144 kilograms of drugs and over 180 firearms.

The intelligence for "Operation Raptor" mainly comes from the destroyed dark web markets, including Nemesis, Tor2Door, Bohemia, and Kingdom Markets. Law enforcement agencies used this intelligence information to successfully launch simultaneous operations in multiple countries, cutting off several drug supply chains on the dark web.

For the first time in action, the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has been included as a partner to impose sanctions on Behrouz Parsarad, the founder of Nemesis Market and an Iranian citizen. Since its launch from 2021 to 2024, the platform has served over 30,000 users and still controlled a large amount of cryptocurrency and servers when it was shut down last year.

FBI Director Kash Patel stated that these drug dealers hiding on the dark web have long harmed American communities, severely exacerbating the drug crisis and gun violence. The success of this operation means that their "sanctuary" has been completely destroyed.

Meanwhile, OFAC froze 49 cryptocurrency addresses related to Nemesis in early March this year, involving an amount of 30 million dollars. In addition to Nemesis, dark web platforms like Genesis and Hydra have also been targeted.

Although the closure of these platforms is an important step in combating dark web drug trafficking, the scale of the dark web market remains huge, generating about $1.7 billion in revenue in 2024.

In summary, this "Operation Raptors" not only demonstrates the tremendous power of international law enforcement cooperation but also provides valuable experience for future efforts to combat dark web drug crimes. We also look forward to more effective curbing of illegal transactions on the dark web as technology and collaboration continue to deepen.

#猛禽行动 # dark web crackdown #crackdown on drug crime