Italian police in conjunction with "Operation Babylon" shutter Dark Web marketplace - pcworld.com : /r/Bitcoin

Anybody have any idea what market this is? WTF market was selling CP? Is this just some bullshit? No results on grams infodesk for "escobar"....

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2955572/italian-police-shutter-dark-web-marketplace.html

Italian police shutter Dark Web marketplace Philip Willan IDG News Service\Rome Bureau

Jul 31, 2015 10:15 AM
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Italian police have shut down a Dark Web marketplace offering illegal goods ranging from child pornography to forged luncheon vouchers, and seized 11,000 bitcoin wallets worth about 1 million euros, authorities said Friday.

Officials compared the marketplace discovered by "Operation Babylon" to the Silk Road online black market that was taken down by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2013.

More than 14,000 people had signed up to the illegal community, which was allegedly run by an Italian living near Naples. There was evidence of 170,000 transaction messages on the Tor platform, which provided 12 kinds of hidden services, police said. These ranged from pornographic images to arms, drugs, false identity papers, hacker kits and credit card codes.

The site hosted around 210 drug dealers, including a notorious operator who uses the pseudonym "Pablo Escobar" after the late Colombian drug lord.

"The virtual world of the Dark Web has its own hierarchies and severe rules on access and affiliation. Getting into such a closed community was extremely difficult," Michele Prestipino, a public prosecutor who coordinated the investigation, told a press conference in Rome.

Dark Web sites do not show up on normal search engines, and the Italian site provided detailed instructions to help users screen their identities.

Police officers working undercover succeeded in penetrating the illegal community in a two-year operation that began as an investigation into the online exchange of child pornography.

Italian investigators have been cooperating with Europol, the European Union's law enforcement agency, and the FBI, to identify customers and sellers who connected on the Italian-operated platform.

Prestipino said the inquiry had been a new experience for Italian law enforcement, revealing the existence of an "incredible criminal world, parallel to Internet, which paradoxically represents only a small part of the communications taking place over the Web," he said. "For us this investigation is just a point of departure."


Comments


[8 Points] Kazaa99:

When the media mention anything about any darknet market, its always said that CP is being sold.


[5 Points] None:

The media also said Silkroad sold child porn, they get things wrong, maybe the whole marketplace never existed, and its a scare tactic?


[4 Points] None:

[deleted]


[5 Points] None:

There's a Babylon Market on the super list.


[3 Points] maniahck:

On babylon there wasn't any child pornography.


[3 Points] None:

[removed]


[2 Points] Vendor_BBMC:

Naples is mafia country.

Organized crime MUST have spotted that, if the darknet needs one thing, it's a bit of organizing. Drug dealers can't go to the police when they're robbed, and darknet vendors are continually robbed by computer who take their 5% commission, but start to get a little too envious of the other 95%.

I'm sure American darknet users think about this kind of thing every day too. Somebody is sure to take a step back and look at the big picture instead of fixating on the postman, before organized crime can wet their beak.


[2 Points] Deku-shrub:

Deep dot web say it was indeed the Babylon market place.


[0 Points] trbdfhnz5erhtbgrfe:

"11,000 bitcoin wallets worth about 1 million euros", how did they calculate this? It's actually pretty close to 3 million euros