AlphaBay dark web masted shut down

AlphaBay, the encrypted site of the dark net market place selling everything from stolen identities to heroin, which operates through the Tor network and dispatches contraband through the post, had gone down unexpectedly, locking it 200, 000 users from their account which collectedly led to millions of pounds worth of crypto currencies. Many voices fears that the website managers did an exit scam to raid the money held in escrow accounts for themselves.

The shutdown was prompted by huge police operation spanning dozens of countries worldwide, as part of their major investigation hailed as the most dramatic strikes against the criminal web in history. It was also partly due to AlphaBay’s weakness for old-fashioned cash. Jeff Sessions, US attorney-general unveiled details of the case this week, as users of the dark web had no idea what was going on. Some users of the dark web began a mass movement to Hansa, the dark web’s second-favoured marketplace which offered superior protection for users to Alphabay.

According to the department of Justice documents released on Thursday, allege Cazes had been managing the AlphaBay site from Thailand for the last two years, amassing £17, 736,161, ( $23,033, 975) fortune and paying salaries to ten assistants administrators and moderators.

Department of Justice said he used wen of offshore arrangements with Swiss, Cypriot, Thai and Liechtenstein institutions to accumulate £ 593,000 ($770, 000) in cash, 10 luxury vehicles including a Lamborghini Aventador and a real estate worth £ 9.63 ($12.5m) in Thailand and Cyprus. The remaining £ 5m ($6.5m) in Cryptocurrencies. Investigators also discovered  Cazes had linked a personal email – Pimp_Alex.91@hotmail.com- to both a welcome message to new users and a password recovery email in 2014.

Before moving to Thailand Cazes founded a company called EBX Technologies, which offered Web development and other services.

Alexandre Cazes’s greatest vulnerability turned out to be his weakness for bragging about his newly acquired wealth and status. In postings, on the RooshV social forum, he gave details of the car he drove, which allowed law enforcement to identify him driving the vehicle and ultimately track him to his home this month.