Vice City Market runs 18,000+ listings and $2.5 million monthly trades on BTC and XMR, with a 5% share. Its 9,000+ users and 700+ vendors focus on drug trades with strong escrow security. In this scam, vendors on darknet markets and vendor shops accept payments from buyers but fail to deliver the ordered products.
Bohemia Market
Customer reviews found on the Abacus site indicate that some of its American vendors sell drug products laced with fentanyl. Throughout the history of the darknet market ecosystem, at different turns one marketplace has typically played the dominant role. The last several years’ examples include Silk Road, AlphaBay, Wall Street Market, and Hydra, most recently. Historically, as law enforcement closed each dominant marketplace, a new leader emerged.
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Its 25,000+ users and 3,000+ vendors trust its unmatched escrow and scale. Incognito channels 20,000+ listings and $2.8M monthly trades through BTC and XMR, with a 5% market presence. Trusted by 10,000+ users and 800+ vendors, its 2FA and escrow networks ensure top privacy. Law enforcement agencies and regulators continue to be interested in identifying and disrupting darknet websites that create, promote, or traffic in illicit activities, including CSAM, illegal weapons sales, drug sales, hacking as a service, and money laundering activities.
What Do Dark Web Vendors Sell?
I paid for the resin from the Asian country $2 per gram and was pleasantly surprised at its potency and fragrance. If the attorney attends the hearing, the conspiracy charges of the accused remain while 90% of the other charges drop. When the accused vendor is arraigned and released, his lawyer asks if he wanted to do a proffer. Proffer is telling the feds or law about the accused’s actions, employers, customers, and vendors.
Communication platforms and forums within the market also play a crucial role in dispute resolution, allowing parties to present evidence and negotiate. The mediator decides whether to give a full refund or a partial refund based on factors like the buyer and seller’s reputation, account age, and presence on other darknet markets. While this system may lack the formalities of traditional legal processes, it aims to maintain the integrity and trust within the darknet market community. Instead of going through the proper channels of seeing a doctor and obtaining a prescription, some individuals choose to order these drugs from a darknet marketplace. This is risky because there is a chance of receiving a product that is laced with fentanyl, which greatly increases the risk of overdosing.
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One of the central76 discussion forums was Reddit’s /r/DarkNetMarkets/,777879 which has been the subject of legal investigation, as well as the Tor-based discussion forum, The Hub. When Archetyp went fully offline in June 2025, it triggered the same recovery reflexes seen after past collapses. Within hours, vendors were resurfacing on forums, scrambling to reconnect with buyers, showing proof of their identities and reassuring business continued as usual. In parallel, many began migrating to alternative markets, initially Abacus and TorZon Market, which became early landing zones.
Instead, they must gain access to multiple, hyper-secure markets and then regularly monitor this wide array of smaller, highly localized platforms. Further confounding efforts, these multiple markets are often scattered across different regions and jurisdictions, requiring significant international cooperation to drive operations. In 2025, agencies will need to deploy a combination of advanced cyber tools, including AI-driven pattern recognition, blockchain analysis, and network infiltration strategies, to track illicit activity across multiple channels.
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DNMs are located on the “darknet,” which is unreachable on standard internet browsers like Chrome, Firefox, or Safari because the darknet is unindexed. There are certain sites on the darknet (and on clearnet) which attempt to manually track and publish sites on the darknet, but common browsers do not link directly to darknet. Operation Dark HunTor led to 65 arrests in the United States, one in Bulgaria, three in France, 47 in Germany, four in the Netherlands, 24 in the United Kingdom, four in Italy, and two in Switzerland.
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- Killnet has attracted a lot of attention because of past DDOS attacks against NATO, U.S. law enforcement, and multiple EU government agencies during the peak of war in Ukraine.
- When using Darknet drug markets, it’s important to take precautions in order to protect yourself from harm or prosecution.
- Same time, RuTOR may be definitely named one of the longest living underground communities surviving challenging times for other Dark Web actors without significant issues.
- Two alleged members of Free Money, a violent Houston-based street gang, were indicted yesterday in the Southern District of Texas for their alleged roles in the murder of one individual…
- Buyers have accused suppliers of price-gouging, while smugglers rightly demand higher fees for the increased risks they are taking by crossing quiet, watchful borders.
Credible reporting from the referenced agencies, in addition to contributions from ATF; Army CID; CBP; Department of Treasury’s FinCEN and Office of Foreign Assets Control; and NCIS enabled domestic law enforcement actions in support of Operation RapTOR. Local, state, and other federal agencies also contributed to investigations through task force participation and regional partnerships. These markets host hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of people who sell drugs, commonly referred to as “vendors”. The dark web offers vital anonymity for vendors and buyers, who use cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin to process transactions.
- Some health professionals such as “DoctorX” provide information, advice and drug-testing services on the darknet.140 The quality of products is attributed to the competition and transparency of darknet markets139 which involve user feedback and reputation features.
- Instead of dealing with crypto exchanges that require a lot of personal information, they could simply give their Bitcoin to someone and receive cash in the mail.
- WizardShop has solidified its status as one of the best data stores in the dark web by providing an impressive quantity of quality data as well as providing a trustworthy, easy to use interface allowing criminals easy and secure buying and selling.
- McDonald purchased bulk quantities of fentanyl and cocaine and then directed others to complete hundreds of drug sales involving large quantities of both fentanyl and cocaine.
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime
Our analysis also focused on the price of illicit drugs that are sold on the darknet. Here we found large disparities between the prices of illicit drugs sold by foreign-based cryptomarket vendors and those located in Australia. For example, average prices for ecstasy sold by Australian vendors were more than six times the price of those sold by their foreign counterparts.
These markets sell a range of illegal goods and services, including drugs, weapons, stolen data, and counterfeit items, and they typically require special software like Tor for access. JCODE is an FBI-led Department of Justice initiative, which supports, coordinates, and assists in de-confliction of investigations targeting for disruption and dismantlement of the online sale of illegal drugs, especially fentanyl and other opioids. JCODE also targets the trafficking of weapons and other illicit goods and services on the internet. Darknet vendor accounts were also identified and attributed to real individuals selling illicit goods on active marketplaces, as well as inactive Darknet marketplaces such as Dream, WallStreet, White House, DeepSea, and Dark Market. Dark web vendors sell detailed guides that teach other scammers how to steal money and commit fraud, often by using products and services that the vendor provides. Common topics for guides and tutorials include hacking, credit card scams, deploying malware and ransomware attacks, social engineering, and digital anonymity.
Though many customers are concentrated in Australia, Abacus has vendors and customers around the world, including the United States. Australians are increasingly using eBay-style darknet marketplaces or cryptomarkets to buy and sell illicit drugs. Operation SpecTor was a collaborative initiative across JCODE members, including the Department of Justice, FBI, DEA, USPIS, HSI, IRS-CI, ATF, Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), and the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations. This operation was aided by non-operational supporting participation from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and U.S. Local, state, and other federal agencies also contributed to Operation SpecTor investigations through task force participation and regional partnerships. Sales are hard to measure with certainty on darknet markets, but by checking customer feedback with specialist software it is possible to estimate trends.
Users of these markets usually access them through the Tor browser or other specialized software. Once they’re connected, they can browse product listings, communicate with vendors, make purchases and even leave reviews for other users. These markets are often structured like an online shopping website with vendors selling everything from drugs to weapons and counterfeit goods. In 2025, darknet marketplaces primarily accept Monero (XMR) and Bitcoin (BTC). Privacy-focused operators are shifting to Monero due to its default anonymity, compared to Bitcoin’s transparent ledger Darknet markets see BTC inflow drop to $2B.
In contrast to Russian-language DNMs, Western darknet marketplaces continued to struggle throughout 2024 as a result of sustained law enforcement action, coupled with several high profile exit scams. Only four Russian-language DNMs left the approximately 20-strong ecosystem in 2024. The departure of market leaders such as Solaris Market — which ceased operations in autumn 2024 — is a rare occurrence. Keeping to the trend witnessed in 2023, Russian-language darknet marketplaces continue to be responsible for the vast majority of revenue generated, contributing over 97% to the overall volume of illicit drug sales (up more than 1% from 2023) in bitcoin and TRON. Classic darknet markets sell diverse illegal goods; data stores focus on leaked or stolen data like credentials, databases, and ID records.
My advice is not to select reputable dark web vendors and stick to novices instead. I suppose that due to the high volume of trade established sellers scam buyers selectively. This applies in particular to foreign customers, because the order is automatically finalized before the deadline for delivery and several bad feedbacks amidst hundreds of positive ones don’t harm the business. Rookies, on the other hand, value each review and try to do their best to attract clients. Furthermore, if a new seller fails to complete at least 40 successful deals (on White House Market, WHM), he won’t get back a $400 vendor’s bond.
