Pierluigi Paganini
December 20, 2023
The Federal Criminal Police Office in Germany (BKA) and the internet-crime combating unit of Frankfurt (ZIT), along with law enforcement agencies from multiple countries (United States, Switzerland, Moldova, and Ukraine), conducted an operation that resulted in the seizure of the dark web marketplace Kingdom Market.
The Kingdom Market was established in March 2021, the offer of the dark web marketplace included drugs, malware, stolen data, and forged documents. Kingdom Market boasted tens of thousands of customer accounts and several hundred registered sellers, featuring a listing that comprised 42,000 items.
Kingdom Market allowed payments with Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero, and Zcash.
“Most recently, over 42,000 products were offered on the marketplace, of these, around 3,600 products come from Germany. Tens of thousands of customers and several hundred seller accounts were registered on the marketplace.” reads a press release published by BKA. “To pay, users of the darknet marketplace used the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero and Zcash. For the processing of sales made via the platform The operators of illegal goods received three percent as a commission payment.”
US law enforcement also arrested on December 15 the alleged administrator of the Kingdom Market, Alan Bill (aka “Vend0r” or “KingdomOfficial,”).
“Certain cryptocurrency transactions from a cluster or group of cryptocurrency addresses used by Kingdom were traced to cryptocurrency wallets held in the name of BILL. Based on the timing and amounts of these transactions, your affiant believes these payments were made to an administrator of Kingdom.” states US court documents. “A specific IP address (“IP ADDRESS 1”) that was used to access a Kingdom Reddit account was also used to access BILL’s cryptocurrency accounts, his email address, and to apply for an ESTA application for BILL. Between November 2021 and April 2023, BILL had large unexplained deposits of Euro into his Slovakian bank accounts totaling approximately €189,000. Many of these deposits were made in cash.”
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