An Australian man is accused of running a $220million illegal darkweb marketplace which has been called the biggest in the world and 'eBay for criminals'.
A joint investigation by Australian Federal Police, Scotland Yard, darkmarket the FBI, Europol, and German authorities, among others, led to the arrest of the Queensland man, 34, as he tried to cross the Danish border into Germany this week.
The man, known only as Julian K, darknet markets 2023 is the alleged operator of DarkMarket and has been detained by German investigators.
A screenshot of the illegal website allegedly run by the Australian man which displays drugs for sale (pictured)
DarkMarket was shut down on Monday and its servers, located in Ukraine and Moldova, were taken off the internet, prosecutors in the city of Koblenz said.
'Until its closure, DarkMarket was probably the largest marketplace worldwide on the darknet market, with almost 500,000 users and more than 2400 sellers,' prosecutors said.
More than 320,000 transactions were conducted via the website including the sale of drugs, counterfeit money, darknet market markets stolen or falsified credit cards, anonymous SIM cards and malware.
The transactions were reportedly worth a total of 4,650 bitcoin and 12,800 monero - two cryptocurrencies - for an equivalent sum of more than $221million.
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