Law enforcement officials have announced that the closure of the darknet marketplace Monopoly in 2021 was a result of the SpecTor operation. As a result, 288 sellers and customers of the resource from around the world were arrested and police confiscated 50.8 million euros in cash and cryptocurrency.
Monopoly appeared on the dark web in 2019 and was used to sell drugs and weapons to customers around the world, accepting payments in both BTC and Monero. When the resource unexpectedly closed in 2021, many assumed it was an exit scam, but others suggested it could have been seized by law enforcement agencies.
Europol has now officially confirmed that Monopoly was seized by German law enforcement officers in 2021 and used to collect evidence about the activity of sellers and buyers. This operation, coordinated by Europol and the FBI, involved police officers from the UK, France, Poland, Germany, Austria, Brazil and Switzerland.
The collected data and evidence formed the basis for hundreds of investigations and subsequent arrests. Most of the arrested sellers and buyers, who sold and bought tens of thousands of illegal goods, lived in the US (153 people), the UK (55 people) and Germany (52 people), as well as in the Netherlands and Austria (10 and 9 arrests).
As part of Operation SpecTor, law enforcement agencies confiscated 850 kg of narcotics, including cocaine, amphetamines, MDMA, LSD, ecstasy, as well as 117 firearms.
