Russia Shuts Down Dark Web Sites With $263M In Crypto Sales

Russia shuts down four dark web sites that made more than $260 million in cryptocurrency sales as we can see further in today’s latest cryptocurrency news.

Russia shuts down four dark websites, Ferum Shop, Sky-Fraud Forum, UAS Store, and Trump’s dump which made more than $260 million in crypto sales. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs took down four major illegal Dark Web sites that have made over $260 million in crypto sales from credit cards. Known as “carding” websites, these illicit platforms offer stolen credit cards and the buyers can purchase them with premium gift cards, cryptos, or luxury goods. The blockchain analysis provider Elliptic revealed that the websites made more than $260 million in digital assets from illegal transactions and the three most used coins were BTC, LTC, and ETH.

According to the analysis, Ferum Shop accounted for $256 million in BTC from stolen credit cards since 2013 and this comprises 17% of the illicit market but having the precise figures is quite hard since Ferum shop employed a sporadic use of payment processor over the years, as Elliptic stated. Trump’s dumps which used former President Donald Trump’s image for branding, raked in $4.1 million since 2017. the platform specialized in selling magnetic strip data from compromised cards which are often called Dumps.

Sky-fraud forum is a place where criminals held discussions on carding techniques and money laundering tips and it also got shut down. The Russian authorities left a message on the platform saying: “Which one of you is next?”

The UAS store Is a popular seller of stolen remote desktop protocol credentials which was the fourth dark website that was closed and accounted for $3 million in digital asset proceeds of which $862,000 was made during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Less than a month ago, the authorities halted the operations of LUXSocks, UniCC and the carding websites made a total of $372 million in crypto while they were operating. Russia’s lawmakers who were highly indecisive on the crypto space announced they will impose regulations on the asset class and not ban it and this is good news for the growing number of local investors.

As per the estimates, Russian citizens collectively own around $214 billion worth of cryptocurrency and the figure represents 12% of the market’s entire value. Anton Siluanov who is the fiannce minister of Russia assumed that the number was greatly exaggerated. He suggested the local investors hold $26 billion worth of crypto.