End for one of the largest online marketing markets in the world

In an extensive international operation coordinated by Europol and Eurojust, law enforcement was broken one of the longest -working drugs with drugs on a dark webcalled Archetyp. As part of the campaign, they arrested the creator and administrator of the platform in Spain and seized almost eight million euros in assets.

The platform, which has been operating for over five years, was considered one of the largest species of this type. It has been registered with more than 600,000 users and 3200 sellers who estimated at least € 250 million in drug trafficking. According to the press release, Archetyp was one of the few platforms that allowed the sale of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. At the time of its operations, it had about 17,000 ads for illicit substances.

The investigation revealed that the creator and current administrator of the platform is a German citizen who resides in Spain. Until his identification, investigators have led to the tracking of financial flows and analysis of digital evidence, through which they also discovered the locations of servers, moderators and key sellers.

About 300 police officers in five countries participated in a coordinated campaign, which took place between 11 and 13 June. Thirty -year -old administrator was arrested in Spain and eight people were arrested in surgery. In addition, law enforcement agencies seized property worth EUR 7.8 million. According to investigators, the closure of the Archetyp platform was struck by drug traffickers in Europe.

When coordinating the investigation and conducting the campaign, Europol played a key role, which provided, among other things, an expert on the dark web and established a virtual command position, and Eurojust, which enabled effective legal cooperation between the countries involved. The surgery involved bodies from Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Romania, and supported the United States.