The two men – Tal Prihar, 37, and Michael Phan, 34 – were arrested for money laundering via the DeepDotWeb website. Deals involved opioids, hacking tools and stolen credit cards. earning them US$ 15 million in commissions.
Tel Aviv (AsiaNews/Agencies) – US authorities, working with Israeli law enforcement, indicted two Israelis Tal Prihar, 37, and Michael Phan, 34, for operating a dark web referral site that favoured the sale of legal and illegal products.
The two were arrested on Monday, Prihar in Paris, France, Phan in Israel. Their arrest follows a lengthy international investigation involving several countries, this according to Scott Brady, Pittsburgh federal district attorney.
Charges against the two men include money laundering and running the DeepDotWeb (DDW) website, which earned hem US$ 15 million in commissions on illegal deals, including the sale of fentanyl and other opioids, hacking tools, and stolen credit cards.
The dark net or dark web can be accessed only by specialised software or hardware and contains clandestine websites in which insiders can communicate and share files and information.
Speaking about the successful operation and the detention of the alleged owners of the website, Brady said that “this prosecution is the first to attack the infrastructure supporting the Darknet itself”.
"DeepDotWeb provided kind of a one-stop information center for people who were trying to access the dark web," Mr Brady added.
In addition to “links to specific dark web marketplaces,” the website “also provided tutorials for people who were perhaps new to this who wanted access to the web” outside the usual channels and far from the reach of the law.
Commissions from DDW bitcoin wallet were moved to other bitcoin accounts and to bank accounts the accused controlled through shell companies.
It gave access to darknet markets like AlphaBay Market, which was shut down by US federal authorities in 2017, and Wall Street Market, another virtual marketplace selling drugs and fake papers, which was closed a few days ago.
According to the US Department of Justice, hundreds of thousands of users used DDW to access such marketplaces, completing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transactions.
DDW’s takedown and the arrest of the two Israelis were made possible by cooperation among law enforcement authorities in the United States, Brazil, Israel, Germany, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
“This is a problem that is transnational and the solutions are transnational,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard Downing.