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Kingdom Market, a dark web marketplace that sold drugs, malicious software, criminal services, and counterfeit documents, has been taken down by the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) with assistance from many foreign law enforcement organizations.
Around 3,600 of the roughly 42,000 products most recently available on the market are from Germany. According to a press statement issued by BKA, the marketplace had several hundred seller accounts and tens of thousands of customers enrolled.
The Operation of the Dark Web Marketplace Kingdom Market
The dark web marketplace, dubbed the Kingdom Market, was founded in March 2021 and offered drugs, malware, stolen data, and fake documents.
Customers on the darknet marketplace paid with Litecoin, Zcash, Monero, and Bitcoin. The operators of illicit products got a commission payment of three percent for the processing of sales made through the platform.
Notably, on December 15, US law enforcement officials arrested Alan Bill, alias “Vend0r” or “KingdomOfficial,” who was suspected of being the Kingdom Market’s administrator.
According to the US court documents, a cluster of cryptocurrency addresses that the Kingdom employed allowed for the tracking of specific cryptocurrency transactions to wallets registered in BILL’s name.
The timing and value of these transactions lead your affiant to conclude that these payments were made to a Kingdom administrator.
A certain IP address (referred to as “IP ADDRESS 1”) that was utilized to gain access to a Kingdom Reddit account was also used to access BILL’s email address, cryptocurrency accounts, and ESTA application.
Further, BILL made significant, unexplained Euro deposits totaling over €189,000 into his Slovakian bank accounts between November 2021 and April 2023. These deposits were made primarily using cash.
Despite being taken offline, reports say other forums will replace the Kingdom Market dark web marketplace.
This marks the second significant takedown of a darknet domain this week, following the FBI’s Tuesday seizure of the AlphV/Blackcat ransomware gang’s website. Affiliates of AlphV/Blackcat have gained access to more than 1,000 organizations and have been paid close to $300 million in ransom.
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