DeepDotWeb News Operator Sentenced to 8 Years for Money Laundering

DeepDotWeb News Operator Sentenced to 8 Years for Money Laundering

Short News:- 

Tal Prihar, 37, an Israeli national residing in Brazil, is said to have served as DDW's administrator since the website's launch in October 2013. DDW ostensibly served as a "news" website connecting internet users to underground marketplaces on the dark web. The U.S. Department of Justice announced the sentencing of a Dark Overlord hacking group associate for his role in selling over 1,700 stolen identities. Slava Dmitriev was arrested in Greece in September 2020 and extradited to the United States in January 2021.

Detailed News:- DeepDotWeb News Operator Sentenced to 8 Years for Money Laundering

Israeli national was sentenced to 97 months in prison for operating the DeepDotWeb (DDW) Clearnet website nearly a year after pleading guilty.

Tal Prihar, 37, an Israeli national residing in Brazil, is said to have served as DDW's administrator since the website's launch in October 2013. In March 2021, he pleaded guilty to money laundering charges and agreed to forfeit the profits amassed illegally.

Until its seizure in May 2019, DDW ostensibly served as a "news" website connecting internet users to underground marketplaces on the dark web that operates through darknets such as Tor, enabling the purchase of illegal firearms, malware and hacking tools, stolen financial data, heroin, fentanyl, and other illicit materials.

Prihar, along with co-defendant Michael Phan, 34, of Israel, provided direct links to illegal marketplaces and, in exchange for advertising these links, reaped substantial profits by receiving kickbacks in the form of 8,155 bitcoins (worth $8.4 million at the time of the transactions) from the marketplace operators.

"To conceal the nature and source of these illegal kickback payments, Prihar transferred funds from his DDW bitcoin wallet to other bitcoin accounts and bank accounts he controlled in the names of shell companies," the US Department of Justice (DoJ) stated last week in a release.

Separately, the Department of Justice announced the sentencing of a Dark Overlord hacking group associate for his role in possessing and selling over 1,700 stolen identities, including social security numbers, on the dark web marketplace AlphaBay.

Slava Dmitriev, a 29-year-old Canadian citizen who was arrested in Greece in September 2020 and extradited to the United States in January 2021, was sentenced to three years in prison in August 2021 after pleading guilty to fraud charges.

"From May 2016 to July 2017, Dmitriev sold 1,764 items on AlphaBay for an estimated $100,000," the Department of Justice said in a press release. "The vast majority of these items were stolen identities, which included names, birth dates, social security numbers, and other personally identifiable information."

In related news, Canadian law enforcement authorities seized and shut down Canadian Headquarter (aka CanadianHQ), a darknet marketplace that specialized in the purchase and sale of spam services, phishing kits, stolen credential data dumps, and access to compromised machines, which purchasers used to conduct a variety of malicious activities.

This development comes on the heels of Europol-led efforts earlier this month to shut down VPNLab.net, a VPN provider used by malicious actors to deploy ransomware against over 100 businesses and facilitate other cybercrime.