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Image: Europol
The forces of the European order have won a great victory this week against the criminals active on the Dark Web. In a press release today, Europol revealed that the police of 13 countries conducted 300 house searchers and arrested 235 suspects who bought counterfeit euro banknotes from a dark web market.
All arrests today are related to a successful case run by the Austrian Criminal Police Office in June 2018 when they tracked down and arrested the owner of a dark Web portal that sold counterfeit money.
An informed source of the details of the case said ZDNet today that the suspect had failed to protect the commercial transactions of his operation with proper encryption. While the suspect used cryptocurrency to receive payments, he still maintained a list of postal addresses where he sent packets containing counterfeit banknotes.
The Austrian authorities seized the suspect's hardware and later found a list of all past customers, which he then transmitted to Europol and other order forces throughout Europe.
In addition to dismantling the Dark Web shop that sold counterfeit money, the authorities have also dismantled the owner's banknote typography, based in Leoben, Austria.
According to Europol, the shop of the suspect was able to print banknotes of 10, 20 and 50 euros. The authorities said he printed and sent over 10,000 counterfeit banknotes before his arrest.
During last week's crackdown on shop shoppers, the authorities recovered 1,500 counterfeit banknotes. During the 300 internal investigations, the authorities have also found drugs, weapons, Bitcoin, virtual currency extraction hardware, a cannabis plantation, but also a further illegal counterfeit printing house in euros – the last two located in France.
At the end of May this year, Europol announced a crackdown across the continent on the illegal activities of Dark Web. While drugs and weapons are often cited as the most widespread products that someone could buy on the dark Web , the counterfeit currency is just as popular and easy to find.
Following are only three portals of Dark Web that sell counterfeit euro banknotes that this reporter managed to find within a minute. Even other stores that sold US dollars, Russian rubles or British pounds were just as easy to locate.
The Austrian police played an important role in the last two years when it came to breaking down the counterfeit money shops operating on the Dark Web.
In February 2017, they dismantled an illegal typography of euro banknotes in Vienna, and with the data obtained from that case, Europol coordinated the arrest of 53 other suspects.
In September 2018, the Austrian authorities cooperated with the Polish police to dismantle another counterfeiting network operating in the Polish city of Gdynia.
Both criminal operations had sold their counterfeit currency on the obscure Web, but apparently failed when it came to protecting their sites.
