Online Black Markets Seized

Alphabay was one of the biggest markets on the dark web. With a very simple user interface, and ease to use, many loved Alphabay. A few weeks ago it was mysteriously offline and no one could get in. After a while, many lost hope and thought maybe an exit scam occurred. But later, it was discovered that Alphabay went down due to law enforcement raiding the Admins of Alphabay. Raids occurred in United States, Thailand, and Canada. Just to give you an idea how big this market was, there was almost a half-a-million members and $600,000 to $800,000 in sales a day!

It first hit news stations in Canada, confirming that law enforcement were repsonsible for Alphabay being down. It said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police raided two houses and a business named Montreal. But no arrests were made at this point, but all of the suspects property was seized.

Another raid occurred in Thailand, leading to 26-year-old Canadian national Alexander Cazes was arrested at his house in Bangkok. The arrest happened because of a U.S.-issued warrant about drug trafficking offenses.
Cazes is now believed to be the creator of AlphaBay, known as DeSnake. Shortly after his arrest, he was found dead in his jail cell(in Thailand) after having hung himself with a towel.

Other websites believed to be run by Cazes appear to have near-direct connections with AlphaBay, and they seem to have went offline around the same time AlphaBay went down and the raids occurred. Reddit users claim Cazes was an AlphaBay administrator known as DeSnake.
After AlphaBay’s disappearance, other top darknet markets have reacted to the situation, but not all have done so in the same way.
Hansa a well-known market has closed registrations for the time being because of all the Alphabay refugees.
But Dream Market and Silk Road 3.1 remain open.