A 25-year-old man was arrested at the scene and taken to Campsie Police Station, where he was charged with 98 offences relating to the supply of prohibited drugs. He also claimed that the stereotype that drug dealers are bad people was a product of narrow-minded people. He attributes his stellar profits to the fact that he is among the most reliable vendors on the dark web at the moment and the extent of his customer base which is currently spread across the world.
Australia Emerges As A Leader In The Global Darknet Drugs Trade
Dark web vendors sell detailed guides that teach other scammers how to steal money and commit fraud, often by using products and services that the vendor provides. Common topics for guides and tutorials include hacking, credit card scams, deploying malware and ransomware attacks, social engineering, and digital anonymity. Classic darknet markets sell diverse illegal goods; data stores focus on leaked or stolen data like credentials, databases, and ID records.
Recognize & Report Crime
When the DarkMarket was taken down, it had 500,000 users and over 2,400 vendors. It had also processed over 320,000 transactions and had a value of 140 million euros. Cybercrime Squad detectives have charged two men for the alleged supply of illicit drugs on the dark web under Strike Force Hallingbury. Chainalysis data shows darknet marketplace revenue dropped post-Hydra seizure in 2022 but recovered to $2 billion in Bitcoin inflows during 2024 Darknet market BTC inflow drop and shift to Monero. Abacus alone represented nearly 5 per cent of total DNM revenue, underscoring the ongoing scale of underground commerce. “Also, we know that drugs sold on the dark net tend to be better quality and less adulterated than drugs that are traded on the street as well.”
Lawyers Call For Police Involved In Kumanjayi White’s Death To Be Suspended
Often people who run these websites pose as buyers and sellers in order to steal personal information. Many websites on the dark net are traps designed to disrupt operations, scam users out of money or hack into people’s computer systems to deliver malware. In 2025, darknet marketplaces primarily accept Monero (XMR) and Bitcoin (BTC). Privacy-focused operators are shifting to Monero due to its default anonymity, compared to Bitcoin’s transparent ledger Darknet markets see BTC inflow drop to $2B. Abacus Market was launched in 2021 and now lists over 40,000 illicit goods, including hacking tools, counterfeit documents, and listings for drugs.
The report highlights how we have more online drug vendors per capita than any other nation except for the Netherlands. Australian crypto market vendors sell disproportionately more ecstasy and opioids globally. We also lead the way with more than a “quarter of the world’s dark net methamphetamine trade (27.1%). Our analysis also focused on the price of illicit drugs that are sold on the darknet. Here we found large disparities between the prices of illicit drugs sold by foreign-based cryptomarket vendors and those located in Australia.
Top Markets
The platform’s activity has increased significantly over the past year, indicating its growing influence and market share in the underground economy. Valued at approximately $15 million, Abacus Market is one of the most lucrative platforms in the dark web ecosystem. In 2024, the platform grew significantly in popularity, partly because of its strategic acquisition of users from a number of recently shut-down marketplaces, such as AlphaBay and Incognito Market, which had recently closed their doors. Although using darknets like TOR isn’t illegal in Australia, it can raise suspicion. This can be true even if you want to use it for legal purposes only while remaining anonymous. If anonymity and security are the purposes, most Australians don’t need to use darknets or dark networks to do the job.
Topics And Products Sold
These efforts helped it become one of the most active platforms among Australian users. In late June 2025, users began reporting withdrawal issues with Abacus Market, which typically indicates an impending exit scam. The marketplace’s administrator, known as ‘Vito’, responded on darkweb discussion forum Dread, claiming an influx of Archetyp users and a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack were the reasons for the issues. Drug vendors, especially on the dark net markets, could be literally anyone including law enforcement agents and to hold such prejudices is shallow. He runs more than a few businesses extending over various darknet markets, including the AlphaBay market, where he boasts of a perfect 10/10 rating. We’ve built a reputation for being one of the most trusted sites in this space.
- People have also gotten caught when advertising or bragging about their trade on the public internet.
- Patterns recommended to avoid include hiring hitmen like Dread Pirate Roberts, and sharing handles for software questions on sites like Stack Exchange.
- The relatively high prices charged by local cryptomarket vendors are likely to be interpreted as signs of success by Australian border protection agencies.
- Cybersecurity experts should pay close attention to these trends, as they often indicate emerging threats and profit-generating tactics among the cybercriminal forums.
- Opioids such as heroin accounted for only 3% of all transactions undertaken by Australian cryptomarket vendors.
Dark Web Marketplaces
The best way to get this browser bundle is to run it from a USB stick. People have also gotten caught when advertising or bragging about their trade on the public internet. Fill out the form to speak with our team about investigative professional services. Faced with the decision between profit seeking and self preservation, Abacus’s admins likely chose the latter in light of Archetyp’s seizure and the surge in new users that elevated Abacus’s profile. Furthermore, after four years of operating and generating substantial profits, the admins likely lost motivation to continue and chose to exit the ecosystem to preserve their freedom and financial gains. World’s leading professional association of Internet Research Specialists – We deliver Knowledge, Education, Training, and Certification in the field of Professional Online Research.
Peddling drugs through the dark web is becoming more attractive, especially for teens trying to make a quick, easy buck from the comfort of their own home. A place that used to be for only the savviest of hackers, the dark net has become the newest way to traffic drugs. An 18 year old Australian teen that was busted last September with close to $60,000 in drugs he bought from the dark web faced 25 years in prison for drug importing. A 22-year-old man was arrested and taken to Fairfield Police Station, where he was charged with 20 offences relating to the supply of prohibited drugs. Police seized a further 350g of prohibited drugs, electronics, and equipment consistent with the manufacture and supply of prohibited drugs. In Yennora, police uncovered an alleged clandestine drug laboratory and specialist police from the Drug and Firearms Squad’s Chemical Operations Unit, the Technical Forensic Support Unit and NSW Fire & Rescue were engaged to dismantle it.
Australia is an important player on the global black market for drugs, with one in three listings for methamphetamine and Codeine, an opioid pain medicine, coming from Australia. One in four listings for heroin and the psychedelic DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine) are from Australia, as are 37 per cent of all listings of Oxycodone, another opioid pain medication. Stimulants — including methamphetamines, cocaine and speed — were the most readily available class of drugs, with 56 sellers offering 2060 listings.
How Do We Review Darknet Markets? 🔎
So what is a dark web store and why are people who run them so hard to catch? Professor of digital forensics at Edith Cowan University, Craig Valli, explains. “Operation RapTor shows that the dark web is not beyond the reach of law enforcement,” added Edvardas Šileris, the Head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre. “Known as Operation RapTor, this international sweep has dismantled networks trafficking in drugs, weapons, and counterfeit goods, sending a clear signal to criminals hiding behind the illusion of anonymity.”
It maintains a very strict level of user verification and integration with an official Telegram account to provide real-time updates to users. Various cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Monero can be used to make purchases. Telegram channels supplement traditional onion sites, blurring lines between the dark web sites and more mainstream communication tools. Today’s cybercriminals spread their activities across multiple platforms, making them harder to track and shut down.
For 2025, they’re teasing a peer-to-peer escrow setup—could be a game-changer. It’s picking up steam fast, and I’d keep an eye on it if you like a community feel. Their DeadDrop system and wallet-less payments mean no one’s running off with your cash—perfect if you’re paranoid like me after a bad deal once. Listings aren’t public, but it’s steady as heck with 2FA and top-shelf encryption. They’re hinting at going decentralized in 2025—less downtime, more trust, right in line with the decentralized trend. The site’s slick, with vendor stats updating live and a checkout that’s a breeze.
“So I think the very large portions that we see of the darknet methamphetamine trade concentrated in Australia really reflects the relative lack of popularity of that drug in Europe and places like that.” The data was collected over a single month and looked at countries with the largest involvement in the dark net drugs trade. Unfortunately, cryptomarkets are unable to resolve the worst, intractable systemic drug violence in source countries such as Mexico. The NSW and Victorian police forces declined to comment specifically on news.com.au’s research, but both said they were aware of Australia’s online drug trade.
