Dark Web Marketplace AlphaBay Shuts For Good After Police Raids (theregister.co.uk)

Dark web marketplace AlphaBay's closure last week followed an international law enforcement operation and multiple raids, it has emerged. It has also been reported that a key suspect who was arrested in the raids has died in custody. From a report: The world's biggest online drug bazaar dropped offline on 5 July, sparking fears that its administrators had disappeared taking a swag bag of digital currency with them, pulling an "exit scam" like other dark web marketplace kingpins before them. The Wall Street Journal reports that a Canadian suspected of running AlphaBay was arrested in Thailand on 5 July following an international police operation involving authorities in the US and Canada as well as Thailand. Alexandre Cazes, the 26-year-old who had been accused of being the site's admin, was found dead in a Thai jail cell on Wednesday, the WSJ adds. The Bangkok Post reported that Cazes had been resident in Thailand for about eight years and had a Thai wife. Thai authorities said they'd seized four Lamborghini cars and three upmarket residences with a combined value of $11.7m (400 million Thai Baht). US authorities had apparently been seeking to extradite Cazes at the time of his death.

Comments

Rule 1. Don't attract attention.

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Thai authorities said they'd seized four Lamborghini cars and three upmarket residences with a combined value of $11.7m (400 million Thai Baht). US authorities had apparently been seeking to extradite Cazes at the time of his death.

This guy could have lead a very comfortable life bouncing around the globe traveling, occasionally logging in to make sure things were running smoothly and shifting money out.

Re:Rule 1. Don't attract attention.

[gweihir]

Indeed. It is a criminal "best practice" to stay under the radar. As is usual in these cases, he will be replaced by more careful operators within no time. Meanwhile, the utterly senseless "War on Drugs" (really a war on self-determination and what you can do for fun waged by authoritarian scum) will continue without any positive effects, but doing massive damage.