German Authorities Take Down Darknet Marketplace ‘Nemesis Market’

German authorities have seized the server infrastructure of the darknet marketplace Nemesis Market, which facilitated the sale of narcotics, fraudulently obtained data, and offered a selection of other cybercrime services, including ransomware.

Police found and seized the Nemesis Market servers in Germany and Lithuania, shutting down multiple illegal operations and confiscating some 94,000 euros in cryptocurrency. No arrests have been made so far.

Like most darknet marketplaces, Nemesis was accessible via the Tor network.

“The operators of the Darknet website are particularly suspected of commercially operating criminal trading platforms on the Internet and of committing crimes against the Narcotics Act,” Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) said in a press release.

The seizure is the result of parallel investigations and close coordination between German, American and Lithuanian law enforcement authorities, including the FBI, DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) and IRS-CI (Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation) since October 2022.

The underground market was founded in 2021 and grew to reach over 150,000 users and more than 1,100 seller accounts registered worldwide. Almost 20 percent of the accounts were based in Germany. Nemesis was used not just to sell narcotics, but also fraudulently obtained data and goods, as well as ransomware, phishing, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and other cybercrime services.

“The seized marketplace data forms the basis for further investigations against criminal sellers and users of the platform,” German authorities said, according to a machine-translated version of the announcement. “The shutdown and prosecution are a further blow to underground economy actors operating on the dark web and demonstrate the effectiveness of international law enforcement in the digital space.”

This is only the latest in a string of hits by German authorities against underground web operators. Earlier this month, German police seized the illegal online trading platform Crimemarket and arrested three people believed to be involved in the operation.

In December of last year, German authorities and law enforcement from the US, Ukraine, Moldova and Switzerland seized the infamous Kingdom Market cybercrime marketplace in a joint operation.

Earlier this year, international law enforcement joined forces to take down the LockBit ransomware operation, seizing its infrastructure and arresting six gang members to date.