As part of the international special operation RapTor, law enforcement officers from 10 countries detained 270 people who were trading drugs, weapons, and other prohibited goods on the darknet. Over €184 million in cash and crypto, as well as huge amounts of illegal goods, were seized.
As part of the international special operation RapTor, law enforcement officers from 10 countries detained 270 people who were trading drugs, weapons, and other prohibited goods on the darknet. Over €184 million in cash and crypto, as well as huge amounts of illegal goods, were seized.
According to The Cyber Express, the large-scale operation was coordinated by Europol. The case is based on digital traces obtained after the liquidation of darknet markets Bohemia, Kingdom Market, Tor2Door and Nemesis. There, the suspects carried out thousands of transactions, hoping for anonymity and cryptocurrency.
During simultaneous raids around the world, we managed to seize:
The operation covered 10 countries, but the bulk of the arrests were in the United States — 130 people. Other countries:
As law enforcement officials explained, the investigation is still ongoing, and new arrests are quite likely.
This is the second time in two years that Europol has conducted such a large-scale «hunt» for darknet crime. The previous SpecTor operation in 2023 resulted in 288 arrests. Now, RapTor has used information from seized servers to identify criminals in different countries.
As noted by Edvardas Šileris, head of the European Cybercrime Center, the darknet is no longer a «safe place» for criminals:
«We work on digital traces and target specific people — anonymity is no longer a guarantee of safety.»
We previously wrote about another major special operation from Europol. From May 19 to 22, law enforcement officers from seven countries, coordinated by Europol and Eurojust, conducted a large-scale cyber operation called Endgame 2.0, aimed at destroying the basic infrastructure of malware — the downloaders that launch a chain of attacks.
