Monopoly Market went offline December 28th 2021, described as “downtime during the holiday period” by it’s administrator. Hours later the administrator vanished and the market remained permanently offline.
One of /u/MonopolyOffical’s, the administrator, last comments on Dread:
I cannot give an ETA, and I am not going to sit in public going into details as to why we are down right now. It’s not appropriate, some things are not to be discussed in public. The fact I am here doing my best to ease the retards should be enough to tell you that we am not trying to exit scam. What the fuck would be the point? If I was exiting, I would have taken your money and be offline right now. Why would I be here, with an offline market trying to convince people otherwise… We are experiencing downtime during the holiday period, our hands are tied right now unless of course something bad has happened and I am just unaware of it right now which I do not believe to be the case.
I am right now looking at the escrow funds, I can assure you if you guys had something to worry about I would too be worrying as the balance would be 0.
One month later, January 29th 2022, DDF tweeted:
ALERT: Monopoly Market’s servers were seized by their host, very likely law enforcement action.
My source insisted upon remaining anonymous but provided irrefutable proof and confirmed their identity using PGP.
Some believe the anonymous source was /u/MonopolyOffical. Indicating he was not arrested during the seizure.
The Monopoly homepage
On the May 2nd 2023, Europol announced, in cooperation with 9 other countries, they’d seized Monopoly Market and arrested 288 darknet vendors and buyers. More than $53.4 million was seized including cash, virtual currencies, 850 kg of drugs, and 117 firearms.
This operation, codenamed SpecTor, was composed of a series of separate complementary actions in Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Brazil, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Switzerland.
The drugs seized:
- 258 kg of amphetamines
- 43 kg of cocaine
- 43 kg of MDMA
- Over 10 kg of LSD and ecstasy pills
Locations the arrests took place:
- United States (153)
- United Kingdom (55)
- Germany (52)
- Netherlands (10)
- Austria (9)
- France (5)
- Switzerland (2)
- Poland (1)
- Brazil (1)
A number of the people arrested were considered high-value targets by Europol.
Europol announced investigations to identify additional individuals behind dark web accounts are still ongoing. As law enforcement authorities gained access to the vendors’ extensive buyer lists, thousands of customers across the globe are now at risk of prosecution as well.