In the latest press release by Tulli, Europol and Finish Customs reported the shutting down of the operational darknet marketplace Sipulimarket. It further announced about confiscating all assets, including cryptos. Carrying out the operation involved the support of Polish Provincial Police Headquarters in Wroclaw, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre(EC3), and Eurojust. Sipulimarket, the Finnish darknet marketplace, also known as Onion Market, was famous for the sale of drugs, illegal commodities, intoxicants, doping devices, and cryptos like Bitcoin. It operates on the Tor Browser and ensures complete encryption of the communication between the user and the website.
Currently, the website displays a message advocating the domain seizure.
“This hidden service has been closed by the Finnish Customs in conjunction with the Cybercrime Department of Provincial Police Headquarters in Wroclaw with the support of Europol and Eurojust for aggregated narcotics offenses.
Sipulimarket was one of the famous Finnish darknet marketplaces operational on the Tor Network after Silkitie(Valhalla), resulted in seizure by Finnish authorities in 2019. However, the amount of cryptos and bitcoin seized from the operations remain undisclosed. The authorities are underway investigating the matter. Further, Finnish Customers and International cooperation partners are striving to gather more information on the case.
Concerning the Sipulimarket shutdown, the Finnish authorities gained technical support and assistance from Europol. It further provided operational support. Furthermore, Europol was instrumental in hosting the seizure banner on the illegal website. The internet security company Bitdefender assisted the Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) relating to the matter. However, this is a strong sign of how law enforcement agencies have targeted illegal entities that hamper the current ecosystem.
Ross Ulbricht’s Silk Road Darknet marketplace seizure by US authorities
Nonetheless, this is not the first attempt by law enforcement agencies to carry out close operations in a quest of closing down the illegal site. The US authorities earlier seized $1 billion in Bitcoin from the famous darknet marketplace, Silk Road, founded by Ross Ulbricht. Silk Road was perpetually known for illegal activities involving money laundering, narcotics, hacking, and trafficking. The founder currently serves double life imprisonment from the US Department of Justice. Government control reinforces the fact that illegally operating sites cannot escape authorities’ purview for long.
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