Abstract:
The U.S. Justice Department recently announced that Raheim Hamilton, the co-founder who once operated one of the world’s largest darknet trading platforms, Empire Market, was sentenced to 40 years in prison by a federal court. Prosecutors pointed out that the platform facilitated approximately US$430 million in illegal transactions during its operation, involving a variety of illegal goods such as drugs, hacking tools, stolen accounts, personal information, and counterfeit currency.
Hamilton, 30, uses pseudonyms such as "Sydney" and "ZeroAngel" online. He started operating Empire Market in 2017 and managed it until the platform’s sudden closure in 2020. Before the platform was shut down, it continued to suffer from ransomware distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and its sudden outage once raised questions among users about "running away with their money," because many people were too late to withdraw funds from their escrow accounts.
The investigation showed that before the establishment of the Empire Market, Hamilton had engaged in trading activities as "ZeroAngel" on AlphaBay, another well-known darknet market, from 2016 to 2017. Imperial Market itself is also designed as a successor and "clone" of AlphaBay, running on a hidden service only accessible through the Tor anonymity network.
Prosecutors said Hamilton co-operated the platform with co-defendant Thomas Pavey, and the two assisted buyers and sellers in completing more than 4 million transactions between 2018 and 2020. Although there are a large number of cybercrime-related commodity transactions on the platform, including stolen credentials, personal identity information and hacking tools, drug sales have always been the main business, with a cumulative transaction volume of nearly 375 million US dollars, and a list of controlled drug products alone exceeding 166,000.
According to officially disclosed data, when it reached its peak in August 2020, the Empire Market had approximately 1.68 million registered users, including more than 5,000 sellers and approximately 360,000 buyers, making it one of the most active darknet markets in the world at that time.
When he pleaded guilty in January this year, Hamilton admitted that the Empire Market was designed from the beginning to help users avoid tracking by law enforcement agencies and achieve anonymous transactions and fund laundering through cryptocurrency. The platform stipulates that all transactions must be settled using cryptocurrency, and users are encouraged to use "coin mixing" services to hide the flow of funds and use encrypted communication methods to communicate.
The U.S. Department of Justice further disclosed that the scale of drugs traded on the platform was staggering, including more than 13,000 grams of fentanyl, more than 446,000 grams of cocaine, more than 71,000 grams of methamphetamine, and more than 103,000 grams of heroin. The platform even allows buyers to rate sellers, and one of the criteria is their ability to conceal contraband when mailing drugs.
Court documents also show that Hamilton and Pavey established a complete operating system and hired multiple administrators and arbitrators to handle disputes between buyers and sellers. Among them, Hamilton is responsible for managing about five moderators and personally participates in the handling of some dispute cases, enabling the platform to have a customer service and dispute resolution mechanism similar to formal e-commerce websites.
This verdict is regarded as one of the most severe judicial actions taken against the operators of large darknet platforms in the United States in recent years. The case also shows once again that as law enforcement agencies strengthen their ability to track the flow of cryptocurrency funds and dark web criminal networks, criminal organizations that have long relied on anonymization technology and digital currencies to hide their identities are facing increasing legal risks.
Comments