Criminal charges were announced Wednesday against two Israeli nationals accused of making millions of dollars by running a website, DeepDotWeb, that referred visitors to other sites where deadly drugs could be bought and sold.
The Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging Tal Prihar, 37, and Michael Phan, 34, with one count each of conspiracy to commit money laundering related to the website, which authorities described during a press conference as “one-stop information center” for people interested in accessing illegal sites hosted on the dark web — a difficult-to-police portion of the internet not indexed by search engines.
“According to the indictment unsealed today, these defendants allegedly made millions of dollars by providing a gateway to illegal darknet marketplaces, allowing hundreds of thousands of users to buy fentanyl, hacking tools, stolen credit cards and other contraband,” said Brian A. Benczkowski, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s criminal division.
DeepDotWeb did not serve as an internet marketplace itself, but rather hosted articles, reviews, information and links about accessing sites where illegal goods could be bought.
Mr. Prihar and Mr. Phan allegedly earned a combined total of $15 million in “kickbacks” made by referring DeepDotWeb visitors to other sites, according to prosecutors.
“This is the single most significant law enforcement disruption of the darknet to date,” added Scott W. Brady, a U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania where the indictment was returned. “While there have been successful prosecutions of various darknet marketplaces, this prosecution is the first to attack the infrastructure supporting the darknet itself.”
Mr. Prihar and Mr. Phan were arrested this week in France and Israel, respectively, in tandem with the main page of DeepDotWeb being replaced with a message saying the site had seized pursuant to an FBI search warrant and in coordination with European law enforcement agencies.
U.S. officials declined to discuss potential extradition during a Wednesday afternoon press conference in Pittsburgh.
Attorneys for the defendants were not listed in court documents and could not immediately be reached for comment.
Law enforcement officials in the U.S. and abroad have collaborated in the past to disrupt actual darknet drug bazaars, and just days earlier the Justice Department and Europol touted a combined effort that recently culminated in the takedown of Wall Street Market, a site the agencies regarded as one of the world’s largest.
DeepDotWeb is unprecedented in that is the first site shuttered by U.S. authorities for having linked to those markets, however.
Alphabay and Hansa, two of the largest darknet marketplaces prior to being similarly seized, received a number of their users through DeepDotWeb, according to prosecutors. Around 23 percent of all transactions on AlphaBay were referred through DeepDotWeb, and around 47 percent of all users who accessed Hansa came through DeepDotWeb, said Mr. Brady.
DeepDotWeb ultimately referred hundreds of thousands of users to darknet marketplaces, in turn facilitating hundreds of millions’ of dollars’ worth of transactions for products including illegal drugs, firearms, hacking tools and other contraband, according to prosecutors.
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