Dark Web Down — Hundreds Arrested As FBI Strikes

Forbes

23-05-2025

Operation RapTor hits Dark Web hard.
Anything that disrupts the criminal dark web is a good thing. Especially when those underground marketplaces, only accessible using specialized browser software and by those with highly vetted criminal credentials, are home to the sale of 19 billion stolen passwords, organized and prolific cybercrime gangs, and ransomware initial access brokers. But there's more to the dark web than passwords and malware; there's also a global trade in the most dangerous of recreational drugs. The FBI has now coordinated a strike against some of the leading dark web drug dealers selling everything from cocaine and methamphetamine, right through to Fentanyl. With 270 arrests, the FBI is determined to take this deadly part of the dark web down. Here's what you need to know.
Don't get me wrong, the so-called dark web does a lot of good in providing a safe space online for the persecuted and at risk when the surface web could be too dangerous a place for them to gather. However, sadly, it's also one of the most evil areas of the internet, and that's not a term I use lightly. When you get arms dealers, drug dealers, pedophiles and people traffickers all in the one place, not to mention the cybercrime operators trading in stolen data and account access, it is hard to come up with a more appropriate word.
Although by its very nature, the dark web operates under the radar to some degree, that doesn't mean it is out of reach of law enforcement, as Operation RapTor has just proven.
Operation RapTor has, in effect, taken a significant portion of the dark web down. Specifically, that which deals in deadly drugs such as fentanyl. 'In Operation RapTor, participating law enforcement agencies in the U.S., Europe, South America, and Asia arrested 270 darknet vendors, buyers, and administrators,' the FBI confirmed. In all, more than 317 pounds of fentanyl were seized, and given that 2 pounds could kill around 500,000 people according to the FBI, that's no small potatoes.
"By cowardly hiding online, these traffickers have wreaked havoc across our country and directly fueled the fentanyl crisis and gun violence impacting our American communities and neighborhoods," FBI Director Kash Patel said. "But the ease and accessibility of their crimes ends today."
'We're trying to keep people safe,' Aaron Pinder, unit chief of the Hi-Tech Organized Crime Unit at FBI Headquarters, responsible for the running of the FBI's Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement team, said. 'We have become very adept at identifying the individuals behind these marketplaces, no matter what role they're in, whether they're an administrator or a vendor, a money launderer, or indeed a buyer.'
Like most such criminal infrastructure disruptions, this won't be the end of dark web drug dealing. Far from it, sadly. However, by taking out big players, dark web admins and buyers included, it will surely slow things down for a while. And that, my friends, has got to be a good thing.