Alpha Bay, Dark Web Drug Marketplace Shut Down By Law Enforcement

AlphaBay, a Dark Web marketplace for illegal drugs and other underground goods, has been down since early last week. Now, it appears the cause of the shutdown was an international effort from law enforcement that nabbed one of the site’s operators, a Canadian citizen named Alexandre Cazes, while he was in Thailand, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal published yesterday. Thailand authorities cooperated with both the US and Canada to make the arrest, with the US leading the charge on extradition.

An alphabay operator was arrested in Thailand, and later found dead in his cell

AlphaBay was largely considered the largest and most lucrative underground marketplace on the Dark Web, a colloquial shorthand term for the network of sites accessible only through the anonymity-preserving web browser Tor.

In addition to drugs, AlphaBay made a significant chunk of its revenue enabling the sale of stolen credit card numbers, as well as firearms. The company apparently made anywhere between $600,000 and $800,000 a day, according to Dark Web researcher and Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Nicolas Christin.

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