A shadowy man, known only as DeSnake verified his identity to WIRED by using his original PGP key. And then using encrypted email the co-founder of AlphaBay told his story in an extended chat interview with the online publication.
The AlphaBay marketplace was selling hundreds of millions of dollars of hard drugs, hacked data, and other contraband. The Dark web platform had over 400,000 registered users. To date, it is the largest dark web market to be taken down by law enforcement.
Everything in the darknet is unregulated. The sites are illegal and marketplaces have been known to disappear overnight. And sometimes when they do lots of cash goes with them.
Death of Alpha01
In 2017, the US Department of Justice announced the Dark Web’s most notorious underground market, AlphaBay, was busted. Thai authorities arrested the site’s 26-year-old co-administrator, Canadian Alexandre Cazes, in Bangkok. Cazes was also known as Alpha1. And the FBI claimed the shutdown of the site was a “landmark operation.”
